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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In a letter (scroll down) to the Independent on February 25, Glen Watson, the director of the UK Census, had the following to say
First, it is not true that EU legislation allows for census information to be shared with EU member states. No personal census information has been or will be provided to EU member states or EU institutions; only statistical tables and counts will be provided.
Second, it is not true that raw census data may be acquired by the police, intelligence agencies, immigration authorities etc under the Statistics and Registration Services Act. The UK Statistics Authority and the Office for National Statistics will never volunteer personal information for any non-statistical purpose.
It is particularly lovely we were assured of that last point. However, a literal reading of Section 39 of The Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 states that for data it holds, the ONS is not permitted to disclose any personal information (ie on specific individuals) to anyone.
Never ever, that is, except if such a disclosure:
(a) is required or permitted by any enactment,
(b) is required by a Community obligation,
(c) is necessary for the purpose of enabling or assisting the Board to exercise any of its functions,
(d) has already lawfully been made available to the public,
(e) is made in pursuance of an order of a court,
(f) is made for the purposes of a criminal investigation or criminal proceedings (whether or not in the UK),
(g) is made, in the interests of national security, to an Intelligence Service,
(h) is made with the consent of the person to whom it relates, or
(i) is made to an approved researcher.
It is great to have such protections, isn’t it?
There was considerable concern at the time of the census that some or all of these exceptions might apply to census data, which is why Mr Watson felt the need to make such a disclaimer.
If he was going to make such a strong claim, one would hope he was sure of it. One would expect that he or his organisation would have asked for legal advice on the matter perhaps? One wouldn’t want to mislead the public any more than one would want to disclose their data to the EU Agriculture Directorate. The readers of the Independent should not be misled, but should be told the truth, always.
Which is why the results of a recent Freedom of Information request to the ONS are quite interesting. Specifically:
The nearest that ONS came to seeking legal advice or formally discussing this matter with Treasury solicitors was while we were drafting the confidentiality undertakings that were incorporated into the Census Regulations. However there was no formal advice sought or specific discussion held about how Section 39 would cover the census, all of these meetings were un-minuted,
Yes, this is just as bad as it sounds. I for one am glad I did not fill in the form.
American government spending will be higher in 2011 than it was in 2010.
Government spending will be higher in 2012 than it was in 2011 – much higher.
The above is all that matters – everything else is piss and wind.
The deal is one great big shining lie.
– Paul Marks
“Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 per cent. of the national income. The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.”
– AJP Taylor, historian. The funny thing is, that AJP Taylor was a lifelong socialist and therefore, supported policies and ideas that led, directly and indirectly, to the destruction of some of the liberties he wrote about in this much-cited passage, on page one, from his classic, English History, 1914-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).. Like many of his generation, he was naive about the Soviet Union, to put it kindly, although he did break with communism while remaining a lifelong member of the Labour Party. But as he would respond, much of the damage to British freedoms mentioned in this passage had been done by the calamity of the First World War and its aftermath. And piecemeal changes – starting in the late 19th Century and arguably hastened by the arrival of the mass franchise, made these liberties vulnerable. But are we being starry-eyed about Victorian-era liberties? Is he describing a myth or a reality? There’s a question to stir up the commenters.
I see that Ed Driscoll of Pajamas Media liked this quote too. I imagine it resonates with American readers quite as much as with a Brit.
My wife and I are off to Cuba next week for a fortnight.
We have to be quick if we’re to catch a glimpse of the place before it changes irreversibly. Every piece of news seems to be in the right direction for Cubans, the wrong direction for tourists seeking picturesqueness.
President Raul Castro has pledged to legalize the purchase and sale of homes by the end of the year, bringing this informal market out of the shadows as part of an economic reform package under which Cuba is already letting islanders go into business for themselves in 178 designated activities, as restaurateurs, wedding planners, plumbers, carpenters.
And:
Since last October, Cuba’s streets have turned on a new look with the opening of new private restaurants, fast food stalls, beauty salons and electronic repair shops.
Yes, got to move fast before Cuba’s USP as the Western Hemisphere’s only communist paradise slips away. Perhaps to pass to Venezuela.
But Venezuela hasn’t got the Hemingway connection to trade on.
At lunchtime yesterday, the BBC’s Test Match Special radio commentators held a most entertaining Q&A with former top cricket umpire John Holder, who was asked questions like: “If a batsman hits the ball, it hits the batsman at the other end, bounces off the teeth of the bowler onto the wicket and the stricken batsman is still out of his ground, is that batsman run out?” (yes); or: “If the batsman hits the ball into the air, and a bag blows across the ground and the ball goes into the bag, and a fielder catches hold of the bag before anything hits the ground, is the batsman out?” (yes again). “If the batsman hits the ball and it strikes the branches of a tree …?” “If a dog gets on the pitch …?” “If a passing bird of prey catches the ball …?” You get the idea. Ho ho, chuckle chuckle. Holder answered everything with utter confidence. Not once could anyone, as the cricket metaphor goes, stump him.
But, about two hours later, right at the very end of the immediately following session of test cricket between England and India, at Trent Bridge Nottingham, a question of just this complicated kind arose for real.
If a batsman hits the ball towards the boundary, and if the fielder stops the ball going to the boundary, but thinks he failed to stop it, and if the fielder then picks the ball up in a relaxed, casual manner, for all the world making it clear that he thinks it was a four, and if the fielders in the middle of the pitch receive the ball in the manner of people who also think that the ball went for four, but if then, as an afterthought, one of the fielders takes the ball and flicks off the bails, with no sense of celebration, just on the off chance, because the umpires haven’t signalled a four, or said that it’s now tea time, but nevertheless, one of the England batsmen has already concluded that it is tea time, and is walking off the pitch, and is thus out of his ground, the fielder who has removed the bails having appealed in a quietly interrogative rather than exultant manner … is the batsman out? That’s what happened, for real. The umpires asked the Indian captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, whether he was withdrawing his appeal. No, said Dhoni. Out, said the umpires. Ian Bell run out 137, off the last ball before tea. Bell bewildered and angry. The England team, and the crowd … not happy.
 Where, the commentators were all saying to one another during their frantic tea interval attempts to explain it all to us listeners, is John Holder when you need him?
But meanwhile, the two Andrews, Flower and Strauss, coach and captain of England, dropped by the Indian dressing room and asked the Indian team if they would withdraw their appeal, and India did. Boos turned to cheers and applause when the umpires (boo!), the Indian team (boo!!), and then … Ian Bell all emerged from the pavilion after the tea break. Hurrah!!!
We now live in an age when all sports fans and all players come to that, rather than just the official salaried commentators and newspaper hacks, can immediately say what is on their (our) minds. This fact may not yet have had very much impact on global politics, the banking system, etc., but it has already changed the atmosphere that surrounds international sport.
So who do I think was right? Were the Indians gents, or suckers? Spirit of the game, or letter of the law? → Continue reading: The run out that wasn’t
“Little does Barack Obama understand that he has forever branded himself as an incompetent and failure. His narcissism and lifelong history of receiving public adulation will not allow him to comprehend the damage. He does not understand that now few will listen to his speeches, no matter how well delivered; that few will believe what he is saying, as he has lied and obfuscated the facts so often. Many world leaders have already arrived at the conclusion that Barack Obama is a leader that cannot be trusted, the citizens of the United States are beginning to understand that he is a man without a core set of principles thus incapable of guiding the ship of state. The media, increasingly realizing their culpability in the nation’s current state of affairs, has begun to ask more penetrating questions and grudgingly question Obama’s fitness for office. Columnists once infatuated with his ability to deliver a speech and skin color have finally begun to admit their error. The Left has become more open in their criticism, as they now understand that the hero upon whom they vested so much hope is a hollow shell.”
– Steve McCann.
As a new (slightly overweight) inhabitant of Neuilly-sur-Seine, I have got into the habit of walking the boundaries of this small suburb to the West of Paris [link in French]. The idea is to become familiar with the street names and neighbourhoods, and drop a few kilos in the process. At many of the main road junctions, rather nicely-built small brick houses can be found, looking like 19th century rural railway stationmasters cottages. They are in fact a vestige of one the French Revolution’s greatest failures, and probably the only thing the collaborationist government of Le Maréchal did right.
August 1st, 1943 is the date when Pierre Laval’s proposal to abolish internal customs tariffs in France came into effect. It was even done for a good reason: wartime hardship meant that the population of France was suffering enough trouble obtaining food at all without having to deal with a tax for crossing a city boundary.
One of the complaints that triggered the 1789 revolution was the practice of taxing the transport of goods within France. For nearly a decade, the “octroi” was eliminated, but restored by the Directorate in 1798. Several attempts were made to scrap the tax during the 19th century. At the turn of the 20th century, individual towns were allowed to scrap the tax, but many did not do so, due to the lack of an alternative source of revenue.
The Neuilly Octroi buildings have been preserved and in some cases have better (or worse) uses today. One of them is a shop selling newspapers and sandwiches. Another is the local office of a trade union syndicate, which I am guessing, is provided either free of charge or at a subsidized rate.
I like the fact that a reminder exists of a time when families would go out of town to buy such things as butter or jam, and smuggle it in baby prams to avoid the tax, less dramatic versions of Checkpoint Charlie. I have not checked, but Montmartre was outside the Paris octroi in the 19th century and as a result a lot of bars opened up offering the Parisian equivalent of “booze cruises.” This in turn became the spot where artists looking for cheap alcohol – especially absinthe – would hang out. So the octroi may well have had a profound indirect effect on the artistic careers of Salvador Dalí, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh.
Pierre Laval was shot for his crimes in 1945. Scrapping the octroi was not one of them.
Ideas matter, and especially to intellectuals like President Obama. He is not a rigid ideologue and is capable of flexible maneuvering. But his interpretation of history, his attitude toward sovereignty, and his confidence in multilateral institutions have shaped his views of American power and of American leadership in ways that distinguish him from previous presidents. On Libya, his deference to the UN Security Council and refusal to serve as coalition leader show that he cares more about restraining America than about accomplishing any particular result in Libya. He views Libya and the whole Arab Spring as relatively small distractions from his broader strategy for breaking with the history of U.S. foreign policy as it developed in the last century. The critics who accuse Obama of being adrift in foreign policy are mistaken. He has clear ideas of where he wants to go. The problem for him is that, if his strategy is set forth plainly, most Americans will not want to follow him.
– The Obama Doctrine Defined by Douglas J. Feith and Seth Cropsey
The first match fixture to be drawn for the 2014 soccer world cup. One of the manifestations of globalization that will go largely unnoticed for a couple of years.
UPDATE: With North Korea and Syria in the same qualifying group of four teams, it looked like we could have a different sort of “Group of Death” than usual, but FIFA chickened out and put Iran and China in other groups.
MORE: Guatemala and Belize. The former’s government claims ownership of the latter. Football correspondent with war zone reporting experience required?
On a more pleasant note, the job I want is covering CONCACAF Group B: Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, Barbados and the Bahamas. Well, someone has got to go there and report on the beaches, I mean football matches…
EVEN MORE: “In consideration of the delicate political situation between Russia and Georgia, FIFA has agreed to a UEFA request that these two teams not be drawn together.” [From the news feed here]
Better (a thousand times better) an athiest who believes in objective truth than a “religious” person who does not.
– our very own Paul Marks
At this point it might be useful to clarify precisely what the dispute concerns. The question is not whether the federal government should grow. As Reason’s Nick Gillespie pointed out a few days ago, nearly nobody in Washington has actually proposed shrinking the leviathan. To the contrary, the dispute is whether to raise federal spending from the current $3.8 trillion to $4.7 trillion over the next decade (the Paul Ryan plan) – or to $5.7 trillion (the Obama plan). Bear in mind that those increases would come on top of one of the fastest expansions of federal spending in U.S. history. When President Obama took office, the budget stood at $2.9 trillion. Two. Point. Nine.
– A. Barton Hinkle
So the USA is screwed… and does this remind you of something?
Reading about the arrest of what appears to have been an extremist planning an attack on Ft Hood, Texas, I was struck by the contrast with the Oslo attack last weekend.
Private First Class Naser Jason Abdo, was arrested Wednesday after making a purchase at Guns Galore in Killeen, Texas, the same ammunition store where Maj. Nidal Hasan purchased the weapons he allegedly used to gun down 13 people and wound 32 others on Nov. 5, 2009.
The point being that a legal gun shop owner is more likely to call the police than a black market arms supplier would. Now if we could only get all the gun rights people in America to realise the advantages of legal outlets for drugs as well…
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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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