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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Encourage adults to consume alcoholic beverage in a bar setting. Set an arbitrary closing, thus to encourage rapid consumption during the final 15 minutes. Throw out on to the street, inebriated, disenchanted drinkers, mostly young males. And here’s the clincher, all at the same time. Ensure that all other bars in the immediate area follow the same pattern. Then act surprised when incidents of violence and criminal damage spike.
Suppose for one perverted moment that an increase in violence and criminal damage were the intention. The present arrangement could hardly be improved upon.
– The hilariously pseudonymous commenter ‘Mustapha Jihad‘
Well, I cannot say I am remotely surprised.
An estimated 11.3 million people – including parents who join school rotas to take pupils to sports events – already face having their backgrounds checked to allow them to work with children.
But Sir Roger Singleton, the chairman of the Independent Safeguarding Authority, said the scope of the database could increase significantly because companies would fear losing business if they did not have their employees vetted.
It is really hard to know how a satire publication like the Onion or Private Eye can make a living these days.
I am in one of my favourite bars, in a railway arch in Peckham in South East London. Good music. Friendly staff and customers. Czech beer on tap. A quite decent Mendoza malbec. Fast and free Wifi (yes, I am hiding behind my laptop. Yes, I am a nerd. If you do not like that, well fuck you). The woman opposite me seems to be staring a little too excessively into the eyes of the man opposite me. Nice for them, no doubt (and yes, I may be bitter, although I am perfectly sincere when I say that this is nice for them and I wish them well).
However, a member of staff just came over, telling me that (sadly) the bar was closing soon (it is 10pm), and asking me to sign a petition, requesting that their licensing hours be increased, so that they can close at midnight rather than the present 10pm.
The story behind this is this. During the first world War, licensing hours in Britain were imposed, requiring bars to close at 11pm. Allowing people to go out drinking after this apparently hurt the war effort. In my native Australia, a 6pm closing hour was imposed at the same time, In some jurisdictions this lasted until the 1960s. But I digress. And this is now generally gone.
My friends from the Latin countries have always been shocked by the 11pm closing hours in England. Coming from countries where they would barely considering going out before midnight, they have always found this odd, to say the least. But the 11pm close was fairly standard, none the less.
However, three or four years ago, things in the UK changed. Responsibility for licensing bars had for a long time been the responsibility of magistrates. If an applicant could demonstrate that he was responsible, then a licence to open a bar would generally be given.
However, the law was changed, so that licensing became the responsibility of local councils – theoretically elected, but much easily bullied by national government than magistrates. Theoretically, this meant more flexibility with respect to licensing hours. At the time, this was sold as allowing bars to open later. In some parts of London, this is true. Generally, the louder and less pleasant places to be are the ones with the later opening hours.
On the other hand, I am in a bar at 10pm on a Monday night. This bar is full of perfectly nice people who are no trouble to anyone. And we are being thrown out onto the street at 10pm.
Why?
Update: As I was on my way out, I stopped and asked the landlord for more details as to the situation. Apparently he has a “facilities licence” allowing him to keep his bar open until midnight, but simultaneously, the council has invoked “planning laws” requiring him to close at 10pm on most nights. He pointed out to me what I knew already, which was that his bar occupies an arch underneath the main London Bridge to Brighton railway, on which (loud) trains run 24 hours a day. My experience is that I was visiting a pleasant bar containing a few perfectly nice people enjoying themselves. Heaven forbid that.
Following on from this post about how technology can boost some businesses but later turn them over, I thought about a specific type of business that I use, as a result of one of the comments. Namely, the optician. I am one of those folk who wear glasses pretty much all day and I do not like bothering with contact lenses or laser eye surgery. I have a slight stigmatism in my right eye and contact lenses for such a thing are very pricey. Since I was a young boy I have worn specs, and after the usual phase of being teased as a “four-eyes”, I got over that, and decided, “To hell with it, I am going to go for the intelligent preppy guy look instead”. (It worked on the ladies, I find. Come to that, I find some women in glasses incredibly attractive).
But will modern technology and things like the internet put some opticians out of business? Possibly. If you know your prescription and the type of lenses you need, then I suppose that if you see a frame that suits, you can submit the order, and assuming the postal system is working, get the specs in a few days. In my case, though, I actually like to browse through a number of different frames and try them on first. There does not seem to be a substitute for doing it in the flesh, so to speak. It is the same, surely, for buying some kind of clothes, even off-the-peg ones where you know your size. Sometimes there is just no getting around the need to go to a store, go to the changing room and try stuff on.
The week resumes after a highly enjoyable and stimulating annual Libertarian Alliance conference, which I attended along with one or two other members of the Samizdata crew, such as Brian Micklethwait. I may put together some more considered thoughts about some of the ideas and issues that arose over the past two days, but for now, let me join in congratulating Antoine Clarke – another occasional Samizdata writer – for picking up a deserved literary prize, and also Tim and Helen Evans and Sean Gabb, for putting this event together. What was encouraging was how we had delegates from all over the globe, with plenty of new, young faces.
One of the best sessions was the final one, in which we were treated to a survey of how the UK public actually thinks about banking and the credit crisis. The results, as Antoine himself suggested, might show that people are far less naive in believing fashionable nonsense about financial affairs than politicians assume. It would be nice to think that whenever some warmed-up Keynesian goes on about “quantitative easing”, the response from Joe Public is to roll the eyes.
The conference also featured a highly entertaining post-dinner speech by Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes. As Paul noted, it is galling that the word “freedom” is conspicuously absent from the rhetoric of any of the main party leaders in the UK. The same, for that matter, can be said of those in countries such as the US.
Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.
– Benjamin Disraeli
So if you purchase a Baby Einstein for your child and he/she does not in fact attain legendary levels of accomplishment in the subjects of physics and mathematics (and become laughably inept at economics), i.e. become just like Albert Einstein… apparently you can get your money refunded.
I assume any parents who dangled a ‘Baby Mozart’ over Hank and Britney’s cribs and were rewarded with nothing but derivative Anton Salieri pastiches from their children, they too can demand Disney put them into funds to compensate them for their bitter disappointment at the mediocrity of their offspring.
A good friend of mine who purchased a ‘Baby Guderian’ for his child several years ago is now expressing some alarm that young Rupert may not in fact turn out to be the military genius that Britain is sure to need in future years when we inevitably take our final leave from the EU, not to mention liberating Aquitaine from the intolerable yoke of the French state.
Is there no end to corporate misrepresentation and malfeasance?
I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can
– Barry Goldwater
… and another for ‘outsiders‘.
When the LibDems take money that is questionable, it is done in ‘good faith’ and that is the end of the matter… when UKIP does it, they are bankrupted by the Electoral Commission.
Curious, no?
Microsoft has no taste. Who in the name of Allah thought this was a good idea?
Update: Here is some proof that this is real. Some people may find this video disturbing.
Patrick Crozier recently did a podcast interview with our own Michael Jennings, on the subject of businesses that are now failing, which I heartily recommend. Michael zeroed in, in particular, on bookshops, spectacles, newspapers and – very topically for today (although the conversation itself took place a short while ago) – postal services.
A particular point which Michael emphasised was how the same technology can start out by helping a particular business, but then turn round and smack it in the vital organs.
The dead tree press, for instance, thanks to the lead given by men like Rupert Murdoch, at first thrived on computer technology. Now look at it.
Computer technology also started out by making postal communication a better deal rather than a worse one. Junk mail, without the e- at the front, was, after all, an early bastard child of computers. And postal services the world over, like most businesses, have enthusiastically applied computer technology to their various activities, making old-school physical communication that much quicker and cheaper and thus more attractive to users than it would otherwise have been. But again, now look at the predicament of post offices, and in particular, today of all days, our own Royal Mail. Note how easily the Royal Mail itself is managing to communicate with us all, despite not being able to send out any letters.
I found particularly interesting what Michael said about the book-selling trade. Once again, the same pattern repeats itself. Early computer technology helps the old-school businesses, in this case the big book-selling chain stores like Borders, by making them more organised. But the big Borders expansion has now gone into reverse, with, for instance, the Oxford Street, London, manifestation of it having just now closed.
Book selling works well on the internet because books are a standard product that you don’t necessarily need to smell, fondle, weigh in your hand, and so on, like you might want to do with something like a camera or a laptop computer. But a product doesn’t have to be generic and standardised to work well as an internet purchase. It just has to be easy to describe with complete accuracy. Most pairs of spectacles are a bespoke product. You just have to know exactly what you want. But this is doable. So high street opticians are a good candidate for execution any year now. I am sure that the Samizdata commentariat will be able to suggest more candidates for imminent death.
Patrick and Michael ended their conversation by agreeing that they didn’t think that the bad economic conditions we’ve been having lately are going to go away any time soon, which means, as Michael pointed out, that people are not going to stop being highly price-conscious, which is one of the big drivers of computerisation and internet-isation, and failure for all the businesses that can’t adapt to these processes.
I’ll end this by recycling an interesting comment that Michael has just added to Patrick’s posting:
As Patrick said, we recorded this over Skype. I was in my home in South-East London talking into my laptop and Patrick was in his home in South-West London conversing with me and replying. This may be another example of what we were talking about. In the late 1990s the traditional former telco monopolies had a huge boom, due to their being seen as the companies that would provide this bold internet future. Now, where are they? BT is now a company that one barely notices, although they do admittedly own the copper that our conversation was going through between my flat and the exchange (although not the equipment in the exchange). Mobile carriers themselves are probably next in this regard.
Like I say, recommended.
Sarah Palin has joined several other quite prominent Republicans and demonstrated that she ‘gets it’ by endorsing a third party Conservative over a Republican RINO running for the House in New York … whereas Newt Gingrich has demonstrated the exact opposite.
Gingrich stated of his backing the official Republican nomination Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava:
“We have to decide which business we are in. If we are in the business about feeling good about ourselves while our country gets crushed then I probably made the wrong decision.”
Which means he thinks the way to revitalise the Republican Party is to nominate Republicans who are functionally interchangeable with Democrats on a great many issues.
Contrast with Palin’s view, who clearly drew the correct lessons from her experience running as McCain’s veep, has picked the Conservative Party of New York candidate over the official Republican one, as did Dick Armey and Fred Thompson:
“The Republican Party today has decided to choose a candidate who more than blurs the lines, and there is no real difference between the Democrat and the Republican in this race.”
As I have been arguing for quite some time now, this is exactly the sort of notion that needs to work its way into the Republican Party. No wonder the media hate her.
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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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