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]
|
Here is a photo I took in March of this year, which I have been meaning to feature here for ages:
We shall see.
One of the many annoying things about the Olympic Games is how little clutches of contractors and workers, doing vital things, know that they can, during the frantic run-up to the Olympics, demand a hugely exorbitant price for merely doing their job, even if they had earlier sworn blind that they would not behave like this. I imagine that’s a very widespread Olympic phenomenon generally, which adds hugely to the final bill, and is just one more reason why I wish the damn things had gone to Paris and never come back, ever.
I surmise – no speculation of this sort could easily be proved – that if any such demand becomes just too demanding, the means used by the State to settle such demands are not confined to bribery. If I was the State, I’d also now be issuing threats. I’d send people round to knock on doors to explain, ever so politely (perhaps over a friendly cup of tea), to such persons as trade unionists and building contractors, just how nasty the State is now capable of being, to individual people whom it has taken against. The State knows where you live. The State decides how much tax you owe it. And so on. And it could get even nastier. So, don’t push your luck too far, there’s a good fellow.
This is all pure speculation on my part. I have zero inside knowledge of any such negotiations. It’s just that if that were now happening, I would not be surprised, whereas if it wasn’t, I would be very surprised indeed.
Another way of responding to such last minute demands is to say: Okay, if you don’t finish it in time, you don’t finish it in time and it doesn’t get finished in time. Pity, but there you go. And once the Olympic Games are over, we can then sack the damn lot of you and take our time. While keeping all your names on a Black List, for you to be suitably punished at our leisure.
This seems to be the approach being adopted in the matter of the Greenwich Cable Car. I am particularly interested in this New London Thing because, when finally finished and open for business, it will be another fine photo-op for me, to add to my London list of places like this.
Yes, says Mayor Boris, we do indeed hope that the Emirates Airline will be ready in time for the Olympics, as another way to get people back and forth across the river, to and from all that Olympicism. But if it isn’t ready by then, so be it. This is not an “Olympic Project”, or it only will be if it is ready for the Olympics.
Very wise.
I recall that the London Eye was supposed to be ready for the Millennium, but that, perhaps for the kind of reasons speculated about above, it wasn’t. Who now cares?
Pity you can’t take that line with such things as velodromes and swimming pools. Which is why I suspect that other means of persuasion are also now being deployed.
This would have made a good Samizdata quote of the day, but as that slot has already been grabbed, here I give you this item about the end-times for the euro:
“For European politicians, the most important task now is to cover their tracks and blame others. Inflation is confusing. It also is an unfair tax on savers and a transfer of wealth to borrowers (assuming that interest rates can be held down or otherwise controlled, probably through nonmarket means). The ECB will now be under great pressure to take actions that create inflation. This may bring the end of the euro.”
The problem is not that the BBC is on the wrong wavelength, it is that it is on any wavelength at all. That in this day and age a supposedly first world country has a tax funded state broadcast institution is simply absurd.
– Perry de Havilland
I am always on the look out for new spots from which to look out over London and take photos. Last week, I discovered another such place, on the roof of something called One New Change, which is a big new shopping centre right next to St Paul’s Cathedral. The weather during the last few weeks has mostly been vile but during a brief break in this weather, I journeyed to One New Change to check it out, and in particular to see if I could go up to its roof and take photos. Internet omens seemed good, but you never really know about such things until you get there.
Here is the entrance I used to get inside One New Change:
Click on any of these pictures if you want to see them bigger.
Modernist architects used to be fond of a phrase to the effect that form should follow function. But the truth is that when it comes to architecture, form tends to follow not function but fashion.
To be fair to the architects, fashion tends also to follow what is technologically possible. At any given moment in modern architectural history, architects have asked themselves: what does building technology now enable us to do which we couldn’t do half a decade ago, thus enabling us to get passers-by to say: Wow, look at that. Is it fair to call this “fashion”? I think so. After all, that is surely how the fashion business itself tends to operate.
So it is with One New Change. Only if you already knew, as I already knew when I went looking for it, would you have known that this is a shopping centre. It could have been a university, an office block, an “arts” or “community” centre, a library, or any one of half a dozen other things. But, you can tell at once that it was only very recently constructed, because here is a building done in the planes of glass at bizarre angles style. Which is a very recent architectural fashion. (One of the growth service industries of our time is presumably specialist window cleaning, of windows that are not easily reached by the usual methods of simply hanging a platform out over the vertical edge of a building and then just going up and down and side to side.)
Where did this style come from? Much of it, as I say, is a case of “because we can”. Glass has got a lot stronger and cleverer in recent years, as have building materials generally. And now that architects have computers to keep track of everything, they can design – and more to the point can build – buildings made in these bizarre shapes.
Another influence at work on modern architecture generally and One New Change in particular is, I surmise, ships. Modernist architects have always been envious of and heavily influenced by ship designers, because with ships, form really does have to follow function, far, far more than is the case with most buildings. Many a nineteen thirties block of flats, with its long horizontal outdoor walkways and curved corners, was designed by an architect with his head full of ocean liner imagery.
More recent ships, of the stealth sort, now offer further “inspiration”. My first reaction to One New Change was that here was a building that was trying to avoid being spotted on anyone’s radar. Which is a very reasonable thing for a building to want to do if it is only a stone’s throw from St Paul’s Cathedral.
So anyway, I went in through this entrance, and found escalators, and a big lift shaft. I decided to try the lift. Early indicators, in the form first of the lift, and then in the form of this very striking view of St Paul’s from this lift, were very good:
That’s a rather wonkily angled photo, what with the lift being in motion and me having only one go at it. Plus, it looks misleadingly dark, on account of me looking towards the afternoon sun. But I like it anyway, because of the sky and the reflections and St Paul’s.
Nobody tried to stop me getting into this lift, as the somewhat warlike appearance of the outside the building was perhaps subconsciously suggesting to me might have happened. I just pushed the usual buttons, just as in any other shopping centre, or for that matter big department store, and up I went.
The lift itself, made from reassuringly solid slabs of that new and clever glass that I have already mentioned, was clearly designed with the viewing experience of those travelling in it very much in mind. It isn’t buried in a lift shaft. Rather is it hung out on the inside of the building, as happens in grand American hotel lobbies that you see in movies. And a slice has been cut from top to bottom through the building to enable St Paul’s to be visible from this lift, throughout one’s ascent. All of which strongly suggested that a similar concern for viewing pleasure might also prevail at the top of the building. The lift rose upwards, and my level of photographic optimism rose with it.
When I got to the top, nobody made me buy a ticket or tried to check my bag or any such thing. And I was right to be photographically optimistic:
Wow. → Continue reading: One New Change
I read this…
Leaders of the three biggest [Greek] parties met at the presidential mansion for a final attempt to bridge their differences, but the talks quickly hit an impasse as they traded accusations on a deeply unpopular bailout package tied to harsh spending cuts
…and…
Polls since the election show the balance of power tipping even further towards opponents of the bailout, who were divided among several small parties but now appear to be rallying behind Tsipras, a 37-year-old ex-Communist student leader
…and was then reminded of this by H.L Menchen which I have often quoted…
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard
Greece is often credited as being the place where formal democracy was first practised in antiquity and so it seems fitting that it is Greece where the current social democratic order of regulatory statism enters its terminal state of Maenad frenzy, perhaps proving beyond all doubt that social democracy is unreformable via democratic means.
But do not kid yourself that the tragicomic indigent collective derangement on ever more florid display is something peculiar to the Hellenic world.
This theatre review’s headline takes the prize as one of the best I have ever seen. It involves Shakespeare.
Talking of the Bard, there is a lot about him at the moment on the BBC and elsewhere. London’s Globe Theatre is running all of his plays.
A blogger called Archbishop Cranmer is being investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority after ten people complained about an advertisment on his blog that tried to get people to sign a petition against gay marriage. Says he:
His Grace is further minded to respond that he has neither fear of nor hatred for the gay and lesbian community, though he is a little pissed off with 10 of them. They could easily have emailed His Grace with their complaint, and we could all have had a jolly good chinwag about the whole thing. Instead, they called in the Gestapo to censor the assertion that marriage is a life-long union between one man and one woman, in accordance with the teaching of the Established Church, the beliefs of its Supreme Governor, and the law of the land.
I like this because it cuts through nearly all of the information hiding abstractions like ‘Advertising Standards Authority’, ‘investigation’ and ‘complaint’.
What is really happening is that A does not like what B is saying and rather than respond with words they have asked C to threaten B with violence. Note that Archbishop Cranmer can not simply ignore the ASA: there are requirements and deadlines imposed upon him. Notice also how notions of ‘complaining to an authority’ who will then ‘conduct an investigation’ make this appear more sanitary than it really is, to the point that I would have a hard time convincing A that violence is involved.
Since the ASA exists to respond to words with violence, its existence can not be justified. Advertising should not be regulated. One might worry that without regulated advertising we would be bombarded with lies, claims and counter-claims and that the world would become a more confusing place. I think instead that it would only reveal confusion that is already there.
H/T Tim Worstall.
Via Guido Fawkes, are these comments from UK Education Secretary Michael Gove. He is not bashing private (or as we Brits confusingly call them, public schools) but making a point, which I think need to be made, that many of the leftist-leaning people who run important media and related institutions were educated privately:
“Armando Iannucci, David Baddiel, Michael McIntyre, Jack Whitehall, Miles Jupp, Armstrong from Armstrong and Miller and Mitchell from Mitchell and Webb were all privately educated. 2010’s Mercury Music Prize was a battle between privately educated Laura Marling and privately-educated Marcus Mumford. And from Chris Martin of Coldplay to Tom Chaplin of Keane – popular music is populated by public school boys. Indeed when Keane were playing last Sunday on the Andrew Marr show everyone in that studio – the band, the presenter and the other guests – Lib Dem peer Matthew Oakeshott, Radio 3 Presenter Clemency Burton-Hill and Sarah Sands, editor of the London Evening Standard – were all privately educated.
Indeed it’s in the media that the public school stranglehold is strongest. The Chairman of the BBC and its Director-General are public school boys. And it’s not just the Evening Standard which has a privately-educated editor. My old paper The Times is edited by an old boy of St Pauls and its sister paper the Sunday Times by an old Bedfordian. The new editor of the Mail on Sunday is an old Etonian, the editor of the Financial Times is an old Alleynian and the editor of the Guardian is an Old Cranleighan. Indeed the Guardian has been edited by privately educated men for the last sixty years… But then many of our most prominent contemporary radical and activist writers are also privately educated.
George Monbiot of the Guardian was at Stowe, Seumas Milne of the Guardian was at Winchester and perhaps the most radical new voice of all Laurie Penny of the Independent – was educated here at Brighton College. Now I record these achievements not because I wish to either decry the individuals concerned or criticise the schools they attended. Far from it. It is undeniable that the individuals I have named are hugely talented and the schools they attended are premier league institutions.”
Food for thought.
In India we used to have a more socialistic economy. Everything was rationed. Sugar was rationed, kerosene was rationed, rice was rationed.
[What I can remember of] a remark made by one of the commentators on the Indian Premier League cricket match between the Chennai Super Kings and the Rajasthan Royals. It was prompted by Chennai’s apparent “rationing” of all-rounder Albie Morkel, who despite being restricted to a mere 6 balls, still managed to score 18 runs, thus saving the game, Chennai’s interest in the tournament and, by extension, civilisation itself.
There has been a bit of a buzz in the internet and elsewhere about a new development off the US West Coast, known as Blueseed:
“More than 100 international tech companies have registered their interest in floating geek city Blueseed, to be launched next year in international waters outside of Silicon Valley. The visa-free, start-up-friendly concept launched late last year aims to create a fully commercial technology incubator where global entrepreneurs can live and work in close proximity to the Valley, accessing VC funding and talent as required. The bulk of registered demand germinated from the U.S. at 20.3%, Indian 10.5%, and Australians at 6%. Reasons: living and working in an “awesome” start-up- and technology-oriented space, proximity to Silicon Valley’s investors, and an alternative to having to get U.S. work visas for company founders or employees were key reasons. Cost:$1,200 to $3,000 per person per month.”
One of the bitter ironies of recent years has been how the US, a country that operates a worldwide system of taxes, as well as tightening its visa and other regulations, has made it not just harder for people, including the likes of software engineers, to enter the country, but also far less easy for expat Americans on short- or long-term trips abroad to do so and gain access to even basic financial services. (To view more on the latter point, see this entry of mine about the FATCA Act.) But as the Blueseed venture demonstrates, entrepreneurs and other liberty-loving people will try and find a way around the tentacles of Big Government. No doubt the Eyeores will say this is all futile, that the authorities will shut this sort of thing down, yadda-yadda, but the very fact that such ventures are being worked on at all is itself a kind of victory for certain ideas.
Reason magazine has a nice roundup on the Blueseed venture. And Patri Friedman’s Seasteading Institute is still going strong. Here is a great book on the subject, How To Start Your Own Country, covering the failed attempts and the mini-victories along the way.
Poverty is a solved problem – all they have to do is abolish taxes and regulations which cripple those intelligent, capable, and responsible men and women and destroy their productive capacity, then stand back and watch the economy boom.
– L. Neil Smith
I am off to southwestern France to coincide with the London Olympics. I shall be swimming in the Med, guzzling delicious red wine and food, reading some gloriously downmarket novels, enjoying the tranquil scenery, and also, avoiding shit like this:
“There are now just 80 days to go before the start of the Great Siege of London, when the daily routines of millions of the capital’s citizens are to be subjected to military diktat. Forget the excitement of the sporting performances at the London 2012 Olympics. The Government’s decision to stage the biggest-ever peacetime display of the nation’s military firepower is set to rival anything the world’s leading athletes can offer at the various Olympic venues. In scenes reminiscent of the Blitz, a new generation of heavily armed Typhoon interceptors and anti-aircraft missile batteries will be stationed among the city’s residential districts ready to shoot down any rogue plane at a moment’s notice.”
|
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.
|
Recent Comments