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.
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The Duchy of Cornwall proudly announces that the Prince of Wales’s old Aston Martin has been converted to run on bio-ethanol – which is sourced as surplus wine from one of his Wiltshire estates. Which is fine by me. If a very rich man wishes to spend his own money in mildly strange ways, and is not really hurting anyone, then who am I to complain? (I personally benefit from the other-wordly advantages of living on the Crown Estates, and very nice it is too, even as a humble tenant without grace and favour.)
I think he should sack his PR, though.
What is presented as a noble austerity for the sake of the planet comes across as a highly elaborate self-indulgence, when just laying up the Aston for a slightly less thirsty car would surely achieve the same thing.
One might also say (and it might be the truth): “We had a lot of wine we couldn’t sell, so we looked around for something sensible to do with it, and discovered we could use it as fuel – even for the Aston Martin.” But they didn’t. Quite the reverse:
Sir Michael Peat, the Prince’s private secretary, said: “The bioethanol from our supplier happens to be made from wine. I think our wine is surplus English wine. It is wonderful. It is not corked.”
That quote’s in all press, so it isn’t a mis-statement coming out in a single interview. It was what the Clarence House establishment decided it would be best to say. They seem to think it is better to advertise not sane frugality, but his massive use of resources in being green – in judgment.
‘Champagne socialism?’ Is that when middle-class people drink it? In – you know… – restaurants?
SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket has been test fired at Kwajalein as the last step in preparation for a July launch. This will be the first flight of the new regen engine which does not require an ablative coating on the nozzle. It is also the same technology as the engines for the larger Falcon-9 slated for launch at Cape Canaveral next year.
Protestations to the contrary, I would consider this to still be a developmental flight, even though it is carrying a customer payload. I wish them the best but it is still early days for their family of boosters. They are going to revolutionize the launch industry but revolutions require hard work and determination in the face of adversity.
That is why they call it rocket science.
As if an answer to my suggestion to document the communist history in Eastern Europe through the lives and eyes of individuals, the PLOTKI, an on-line and print magazine about culture and society in Central and Eastern Europe, invites contributions to a project Changes from Below:
The project “Changes From Below“ aims to collect pieces of research which highlight personal stories behind movements against ‘‘communist’’ dictatorship in Central and Eastern Europe.
… Whilst historical investigation on resistance to ‘communist’ rule often focuses on historical ‘grand events’ such uprisings as Prague Spring 1968, Hungarian Autumn 1956, 17 June 1953 in GDR or Poland in the 80’s, Plotki wants to research the smaller stories, personal experiences and the rumours which slipped through the historical sieve and serve them up via various artistic means such as writing, photography, graphics, film or audio. We are thinking about the Orange Alternative in Poland who attended illegal meetings of dwarfs, and were arresting for handing out tampons to women; the spontaneous ‘community supported agriculture’ networks that evolved during Ceausescu’s dictatorship in Romania, and that kept urban people alive by illegally supplying them with food; or Czechoslovakia’s Society for Happier Contemporary Times; or the diversity of ecological movements as the Umweltbibliothek (an environment documentation centre) in East Berlin, Ekoglasnost in Bulgaria or groups of people concerned with ecological damage in Bohemia; or factory self-management in Yugoslavia; or the protestant churches resistance in GDR; or the countless other inspirational, exciting and quirky forms of resistance which once inhabited the region.
Great stuff and worthwhile effort, no doubt. Just one minor gripe – what’s with the quotation marks/inverted commas around the word communist?!
A person calling him or herself “Thorkel” left a comment over at Wired magazine’s recent item on water shortages:
Your article on the planet’s dwindling supplies of freshwater (“Peak Water,” issue 16.05) shies away from the obvious: There’s not a hope in hell of avoiding dangerous water shortages until demand is reduced. And there’s not a hope in hell of reducing demand sufficiently until the human population is significantly reduced. We can either start taking measures to curtail our own breeding, or we can die in thirst and hunger and in the wars over what little is left.
How “significantly” we should reduce the human population, or by what means, is not explained. Apart from “curtailing our own breeding” (by forced sterlisation, compulsory abortions on the Chinese model, perhaps?) is not explained either. Neither is this writer, I expect, aware of how previous predictions of disastrous shortages of water and food been shown to be utter nonsense.
More than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered in water. That seawater is not drinkable but then the problem is therefore one of using resources to convert that water into drinkable form. But to suggest that the Earth has a water shortage problem is a nonsense; what it has is currently an under-investment in the systems that might be needed to convert seawater into liquids fit for human use.
The always readable Leon Louw, who spoke at last year’s Libertarian Alliance conference on the issues raised here, is good on this topic.
Data is accumulating that the British residential property market is now undergoing a significant fall. The commercial side of it has been suffering for some time. Apart from some prime residential bits in central London – and even these parts are not immune to change – average prices have now fallen month on month across the country for quite some time.
Some of this may abate eventually. I hope so, since a collapse in house prices would presage a major recession. It is all well and good for people to say that a shakeout is necessary to clear all this cheap money out of the system – and I understand that point – but it is pretty grim having to endure the process first-hand. But beyond that, what this episode reminds me of is the unwise move by many people to put all their long-term retirement savings options into property. I know quite a few people who cheerfully tell me that they have no pension and are relying on a business or set of properties to do the job. Well, they have a half-decent point: many pension savings schemes are a rip-off and poorly invested. But relying on bricks and mortar to keep us comfortable in our rocking chairs does not strike me as very smart. Maybe market developments will act as a wakeup call. And anyway, as I have remarked before, more and more people are going to have to re-think the whole notion of “retirement” anyway, particularly if we are going to live longer, and in healthier shape, than our ancestors.
To succeed in modern politics you should take care to be a bland, self-preserving, sober, drugless, funless, dull-witted bore for years beforehand.
– Libby Purves, discussing leftyluvviedom’s cultivation of the Two Minutes Hate1 against Boris Johnson.
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1The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
– George Orwell, ‘1984’
You may not know that a Home Office minister is touring the UK holding ‘consultation’ meetings about the National Identity Scheme, and that it is more nonsensical than even the average government consultation exercise. She is, however, and nothing will be allowed to stand in her way. 3 members of NO2ID were arrested this morning for “suspected breach of the peace” while protesting outside the venue of the Edinburgh consultation exercise. Making ministers look bad will these days get you hustled away by police, apparently.
The reason the ‘consultation’ is even more fatuous than usual is this. There is no question the intention is to go ahead: the legislation was passed two years ago. And any questioning of the plan is ruled out of order – if not, indeed, arrestable. The object of this tour is to gather together “stakeholders” – businesses and voluntary organisations, and to persuade them that helping the government strong-arm their customers, staff and volunteers into enrolling will ultimately be for the good of all. In fact it seeks suggestions from them how best to get universal compliance.
Rounding up any dissidents is the last resort, of course.
Update: Apparently 9 people are still in custody at time of writing (18:20 BST). Hat-tip: Glasgow Herald, who called me for a statement.
Update 2: (06:23 BST) You can read the account of Geraint Bevan, of NO2ID Scotland, here. (The hard scientists among our readers will be pleased to know that the ‘Dr’ signifies Geraint just got his PhD in engineering.)
Just to avoid any possible confusion, I should probably point out here that the Samizdata Illuminatus is a collective pseudonym used when any of the regular writers of this site wants to publish something anonymously. The author of this post is actually in London, not Massachusetts
Dale posted below about the idiotic rules he encountered when attempting to buy asprin in (I presume) Northern Ireland. I cannot answer the question as to whether the situation with asprin is really as absurd as his pharmacy said it was, but in answer to the question of whether it could be that absurd, I can assure him that the answer is very definitely yes. In this regard I have a little story of my own.
I have a hiatus hernia, which causes acid reflex in my oesophagus, which is intensely painful and uncomfortable, makes it difficult to eat certain kinds of food (anything at all acidic), and if untreated could lead to longer term problems that are even more serious (In the worst case cancer of the oesophagus). There is a class of drugs called proton-pump inhibitors that are used to treat this condition, and they are simply wonderful. You take one pill a day, and all your symptoms go away. They are really this good. The best known of these drugs is omeprazole, sold under the brand name “Losec” in Europe and “Prilosec” in the US. To get this drung, I could get a prescription from a doctor, but I would rather not have to deal with the NHS, as I find doing so to be too soul destroying.
However, the drug is available in the UK without a prescription, so no problem.
Well, not exactly. Omeprazole is a “behind the counter” drug in the UK, meaning that it is only available in pharmacies and you cannot simply pick it up off a shelf and then take it to the cashier and pay for it, but you have to actually walk up to the pharmacy counter and ask for it, supposedly so that you can receive proper advice. However, the nasty sting is that pharmacies tend not to display the price of such drugs in clear view, so you don’t usually find out the price until after you ask for the drug. They are relying on people being too embarassed to say that the drug is too expensive after having asked a pharmacist for it, so “behind the counter” drugs tend to be priced much higher then they would be if they were on the regular shelves.
To make things worse, the law states that the over the counter version of omeprazole must be sold in 10mg pills (the standard for the prescription version is 20mg) and in packets containing no more than 14 pills. There is nothing stopping you from buying a larger number of pills to obtain a larger dose, other than the fact that the way the drug is regulated and sold makes it expensive to do this. I am charged about £8 for such a pack of 14 pills, but as they are half dose pills, this is only a week’s supply. (This is almost entirely profit for the pharmacy, as the patent on the drug has expired).
So, although the drug is very effective for people with certain ailments, not prone to any kind of abuse, pretty much completely harmless, out of patent and very cheap to manufacture without any intellectual property issues, I cannot buy it without vast numbers of rent seekers in the medical and related professions profiteering from doing so (either by charging me directly or charging the government via the NHS) and the price being pushed up to a level I find annoying.
The US lacks this “behind the counter” racket, and omeprazole is also available over the counter in the US in large packets of proper 20mg pills, so there is nothing preventing me from buying it in large quantities at Wal-Mart when I am in the US, for about a quarter of what I pay for it in the UK. However, the Americans have lots of other rackets and the situation with this drug is sadly not typical, as American regulators (under pressure from doctors groups) are extremely reluctant to reclassify other prescription drugs as over the counter.
Sadly, though, I visit the US only once a year, if that, and my supplies seldom last until the next trip. Recently, I have found another solution, however, which is to buy the drug on eBay from people in Delhi. The price in this case is much less than I would pay even in the US, and less than a tenth what I would pay in the UK. It is possible to argue about the ethics of importing patented medicines from abroad, but in a situation in which the patent has expired, parallel imports are definitely something to be encouraged. It is probably not technically legal for me to conduct my own parallel imports from abroad, but I really do not care.
And there is something supremely ironic about using India to get arount the permit-Raj of the developed world medical bureaucracy.
“I don’t want to remake America. I’m an immigrant, and one reason I came here is because most of the rest of the Western world remade itself along the lines Sen. Obama has in mind. This is pretty much the end of the line for me. If he remakes America, there’s nowhere for me to go – although presumably once he’s lowered sea levels around the planet there should be a few new atolls popping up here and there.”
– Mark Steyn, who despite his recent legal hassles, has not lost his sense of humour.
The odd dull, negative game apart, I thought the European Championship football tournament, held this year in Austria and Switzerland, has been excellent with plenty of attacking flair to savour. For me, the highlights have been the Holland-Italy match (the Dutch won it decisively); the Russia-Holland game (the Russians turned over the Dutch in superb style) and the final, won by the wonderful Spanish side, which has waited a long time for this moment. It is good to see a flair team win a tournament like this rather than some dour, heart-breaking finish involving a penalty shoot-out. Here is a good Reuters summary of the whole tournament.
And I will not be the first, or probably the last, person to write that I did not miss England’s involvement this year (the English did not qualify for the tournament). We missed the worries about English football fans misbehaving, or endless media agonising up to the games and the inevitable penalty shoot-out losses to the Germans or the Portuguese. Bliss.
No, it is not a streamlined version of the answer to life, the universe and everything. It is the maximum number of aspirin in a bottle available at the local Clear Pharmacy. According to the Pharmacist on duty, that is the largest number sellable without a prescription.
I am sure I looked perplexed with my jaw hanging open during the few speechless moments before I came out with the only answer I could think of: “You must be joking.”
Before you get too uppity about freedom in America… the last time I bought 24 Hour Cold Capsules in Manhattan I had to sign a register so the government could make sure I was not going to use them to make ‘speed’.
“We’re from the Government. We’re here to help you.”
Not.
PS: Can anyone confirm this is really, genuinely true? I am still having trouble believing it myself. It is just, too absurd.
I notice that the this week’s Economist is taking the same basic line as its sister publication the Financial Times did the Saturday after the Irish ‘no’ vote, that the EU can carry on without the text that was voted down. And, from their own stand point, both publications may well be correct.
It would be nice for them if the European Union had total power (which the ‘Treaty of Lisbon’ would have given it – especially with its amending clause), but the E.U. already has vast power (about 80% of new regulations are a response to its orders) so there is great scope for more collectivism of the involuntary, statist, sort.
And as the European Union contains almost all the major nations of Europe (with the exception of Russia) it can bully the remaining nations – at least with these nations being dominated by a political class who go along with basic philosophy of the EU anyway, due to their education and to the influence of the mainstream media, and so are looking for excuses to give in.
Meanwhile, in the United States the totalitarians look set to take over soon. I have presented evidence that they (both key members of Congress and others) are totalitarians in a previous posting and I will not type it all out again – so I will content myself with wondering whether, when the spiritual son of Saul Alinsky becomes President of the United States, he will invite Bill Ayers (and the other comrades he left Harvard to join in Chicago) to his inauguration.
So the United States and the European Union will sit grinning at each other as vital parts of the “world community”.
It will be rather like Tolkien’s Orthanc and Barad Dur. Or a fallen Minas Tirith grinning at Minas Morgul – over a land “filled with rotteness”.
Try to prevent this, or do not, as you choose. But do not lie and say you did not know what was coming.
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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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