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“The Tories are free-marketeers – they have a mechanism to get rid of their leader on a wet weekend. Labour are central planners, so adopt protectionist policies.” – Fraser Nelson, over the Spectator’s Coffee House blog. His quote makes a fair bit of sense, even if you, like yours truly, wonder about the free market credentials of David Cameron’s Conservative Party. May 5th, 2008 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The following choice quote has perhaps already been recycled here. It has surely done the rounds elsewhere. But just to be sure, here it is for Samizdata readers, either again or for the first time:
Which, I think you will agree, nicely sums up the Samizdata attitude towards politicians, whether we have been “in government” on not. Usually, just having a particularly governmental bit of government done to us is sufficient, and it does not require five years of it to happen before such enlightenment is arrived at. And you certainly do not have to be a politician for half a decade to find out how nasty politics is. This was said by Antonio Martino, Italy’s Defence Minister from 2001 until 2006, at the 2006 meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Guatemala. It was quoted by Charles Murray at the start of this speech, which was given in Washington just after that MPS meeting. I came across this speech by Murray because I was looking for a picture of him to use in a posting at my education blog, about this article by Murray entitled The age of educational romanticism. May 5th, 2008 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Glenn Reynolds links to this article on not one, but two different pipe bombings in San Diego. I suspect the answer to the question “Why Haven’t We Heard About This” is to be found in the lack of blood and bodies. No bleed, no lead. May 5th, 2008 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Christopher Booker has a great article in the Telegraph titled Watch the web for climate change truths, which shows that The One True Faith of Anthropogenic Global Warming, having used the internet to preach their gospel, are going to have a hard time suppressing global warming non-conformists using the ‘net to do the same.
So not such a bad time to be a polar bear after all. It is also nice to see in-article out-linking to a source on a newspaper site. Also Daniel Hannan has a Telegraph blog article called How bad does the UN have to get? which presents the difference between the ideals and reality of that vast organisation, mentioning ivory poaching, the Iraq food-for-oil scandal, the betrayal of Bosnian Muslims massacred in Srebrenica and the appalling UN role in the Rwanda genocide. However the most interesting part for me was in the comments, a defender of the UN replied thusly:
So we need more information before rushing to judgement. That is a very representative defence of the UN of the sort I have heard for years. It is the equivalent of the time hallowed tactic of a UK minister responding to embarrassing questions by saying “we must hold an enquiry before rushing to judgement” in the knowledge that by the time the enquiry gets under way, said embarrassing news will be months or even years in the past and the the headlines have vanished down the memory hole, allowing harsh reality to be safely reinterpreted into something more ‘nuanced’ and the gravy trains will still keep running along their well polished rails undisturbed… except in the cases of Srebrenica, Food-for-Oil and Rwanda, the nasty truths are very well documented and understood. All this is only ten seconds of typing and click of the Google button away. The internet really does change almost everything. May 4th, 2008 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
How do we trust a guy who says he knows about London, when he’s just taken three of his kids out of state school and put them into private schools? – Arabella Weir, on Boris, in The Guardian’s desperate chrestomathy of leftyluvviedom for Ken. I would say it indicates very clearly that he does know something about London’s state schools. More penetrating political insight from woman of the people Ms Weir here. Foreign readers may be aghast at the political culture of central control the latter clip reveals. It is not for the faint-hearted libertarian – or for that matter anyone, conservative or liberal, with a sincere belief in separation of powers and limited government. May 3rd, 2008 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
“We’ve had it with baby boomer politics. We’ve had it with coteries and courts, dens and sofas. But if we are fed up with that private politics, we are also tired of the public face of politics. We are told that modern politics is about TV studios: that poisonous truth may be about to become untrue. Westminster and Whitehall might yet make a come-back, as bastions of decently-argued policy and its delivery. This is a switch away from post-60s trends. But it needn’t be a backward step to snobbery and stuffiness.” I hope he is right, although I doubt that Westminster and Whitehall have ever achieved a high point of “decently argued policy and its delivery”. Rose-tinted spectacles, and all that. May 3rd, 2008 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
The new-look Harry’s Place carries this zinger of an article debunking a piece of revisionist tripe from the former editor of the New Statesman. The idea, essentially, is that Britain should have stayed out of WW2 so that the poor, put-upon Mr Hitler could then have shipped those pesky Jews off to some island in the Indian Ocean. Unbelievable. May 2nd, 2008 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
From time to time I have covered the efforts of libertarian heroes Carla Howell and Michael Cloud to bring about an end to the Massachusetts income tax. They succeeded in the collection and complex certification of a huge number of signatures; they defeated an underhanded counter-attack by the teachers union; they even overcame a law-breaking legislature:
Now they have one more hurdle before they get on the ballot. Another twenty thousand signature collected, distributed to each town for certification and then delivered to the appropriate State official by June 9. Should be a dawdle for those two, but if you want to help you can do so here. By the way, I will be working the JPMorgan Tech08 show in Boston later this month. May 2nd, 2008 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Via this blog, comes this awesomely silly story:
Fantastic. Just imagine how one could play with this. Suppose the town council of Dorking, southern England, sues anyone who is referred to, or uses the pejorative term, “Dork”. Greece: did not that country once come up with clever chaps like Aristotle or something? As ever, those interested in silly lawsuits should keep an eye on Overlawyered, an invaluable blog. May 2nd, 2008 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
… to be in government. Making the country a ‘better place’ comes a distant second. Alex Singleton (of this parish) has an article up on Brassneck titled Hugo Chavez is blinded by ideology. He points out the foolishness of Hugo Chavez’s ‘concerns’ about a small British owned cocoa estate in Venezuela, given that a nationalised estate is highly unlikely to be able to reproduce the alleged high quality of Willie Harcourt-Cooze’s operation. But that presupposes that Hugo Chavez gives a damn about the economic consequences of his actions. I think he is far from ‘blind’ to the implication of his policies, more likely he simply does not see them as particularly relevant to politics… and everything Chavez does is about politics. The only real reason that a small British owned operation would attract the attention of someone like ‘El Duce’ is he sees political benefit in being seen to move against a ‘foreign’ business, never mind how many locals it employs or what local goods and services the business uses. It is important to remember that his power base is motivated primarily by envy and not by their own wealth directly, or lack thereof. In other words, the sort of people in Venezuela who support a demagogic national socialist like Chavez would react well to sticking it to a Brit and the net economic weal of the nation has very little to do with it. Chavez is the government and getting people to support the government is all that matters to a creature like him. And as that is what his supporters want, if such an approach writ large destroys the Venezuelan economy, people are only getting exactly what they voted for. Personally I think his supporters deserve every day they live in abject poverty, something that will continue for the foreseeable future under their government of choice… pity about the rest however. May 1st, 2008 | 48 comments - (Comments are closed)
A couple of weeks ago I linked to a story about how the UK drugmaker Shire was planning to relocate offshore to avoid paying UK tax. The FT reports today that a large number of blue-chip firms are looking at following suit. The problem, however, is that even if the UK government cuts corporate taxes to entice firms not to leave, a high-spending administration like this one is likely to recoup any loss of revenue by hiking taxes elsewhere. If it does, that will only encourage more people to leave. May 1st, 2008 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
We are marvelling at the multiple possibilities of Oyster, but come back here in 10 years’ time and we will have chips inserted under our skin or inside our heads – Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, quoted by Computing [Those foreign readers who are unfamiliar with Oyster should maybe start here. Those unfamiliar with our dear leader, the mayor, can read his official bio here, but Red Ken is a massive subject, and if you can understand his career then you know more about British politics than I do. Here is a recent friendly (!) blog post. Now if you’ll excuse me, it is 6.43am and I am off to vote.] May 1st, 2008 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
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