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]
|
CityAm, the freesheet newspaper in London, has this cracking scoop:
Shire Pharmaceuticals, the FTSE 100 drugs giant that focuses on treatments for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is to re-register its head office outside the UK for tax reasons.
The group, which is valued at around £5bn, has been consulting the accounting group PriceWaterhouseCoopers on the merits of a move and is set to inform investors today. Shire’s headquarters are currently near Basingstoke. The news will come as a further blow to the UK economy.
The story ends with a quote from Matthew Elliott, head of the lobby group, The TaxPayers’ Alliance:
“This disastrous news confirms that Britain’s competitiveness has suffered a series of blows from misguided tax hikes.”
I am glad to see that the influence of CityAm’s newly-appointed editor, Allister Heath, who has written on the flat-tax issue in the past for the Taxpayer’s Alliance and at the now-defunct weekly, The Business, is making itself felt. Far too many journalists at places such as the FT, for instance, seem to operate in a corporatist cocoon. Allister will not make that mistake.
Michael Totten has yet another great article from Iraq, this time about Fallujah, once the scene of such bitter and intense fighting. The article is a condensed version of the material he has published on his web site and if you wanted to really get a feel for the place, this is the article to read
The whole article is interesting (as ever) but in my opinion the ‘money quote’ is to be found in the final paragraph:
That said, Fallujah’s worst days are likely behind it. “The al-Qaida leadership outside dumped huge amounts of money and people and arms into Anbar Province,” says Lieutenant Colonel Mike Silverman, who oversees an area just north of Ramadi. “They poured everything they had into this place. The battle against Americans in Anbar became their most important fight in the world. And they lost”.
Read the whole thing.
You should trust us, because we’re trustworthy people who would never do anything wrong (please ignore all we’ve done wrong over the past few years). So, now that that’s settled, let’s get this baby rolling…
-Mike Masnick interprets Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff’s response to critics of the planned expansion of the US spy satellite program
“The background to this method of policing is that NuLab became increasingly irritated with the police detecting crime. This tended to militate against the working classes (few question the link between poverty and crime). Being so unutterably incompetent, NuLab were were unable to tackle poverty (unless by increasing it, they can claim to be tackling poverty). One solution to this was to make crime detection a more egalitarian process. By criminalising “anti-social” behavior that was more likely to committed by the middle classes (speeding, hunting etc), then issuing directives for police to ramp up their response to such infractions, the thinking was that this would highlight how criminality was not the preserve of the put upon working classes.
On top of this, there existed a situation whereby the number crunchers claimed that the fear of being a victim of crime far outweighed the reality of being a victim of crime. Hence the emphasis shifted away from tackling crime i.e oppressing the working classes, to tackling the fear of crime. This had a cheap solution: high visibility policing. It is this thinking that lead to the introduction of those decaffeinated police officers known as “PCSOs”, along with the requirement for high visibility vests worn with officers. This type of thinking also results in situations such as the Forest Gate incident, whereby the number of officers present seems to far outweigh the threat and the inclusion of the press in high profile operations. All of these things are designed to tackle the FEAR of crime, not crime itself.”
From one of our readers, “Fed_Up”, commenting on my recent encounter with the police. Thanks for the comments. The one here raises the issue of class. It is sometimes said that these days, the cops, or at least some of them, are the “paramilitary wing of the Guardian newspaper”. This represents a significant shift in the cultural/political standing of the police over my lifetime.
Consider this: there is no doubt that during the 1980s, when the Conservatives were in power, some of the police powers used at the time got on to the statute books with relatively little complaint from what I might loosely call “the right”. Not everyone was complacent, of course. Libertarian Alliance Director Sean Gabb and the LA’s founder, the late Chris R. Tame, were early in pointing out at the time that no consistent defence of liberty makes sense if it is confined purely to economics, a point that some Tories to this day don’t seem to grasp. While coppers were pinching Rastafarians in Brixton and hitting coalminers on the head in Yorkshire, a lot of the middle classes were happy to look the other way. As an unashamed middle class Brit with mortgage, happy marriage and decent job, I am the sort of person, I suppose, that has in a certain way been radicalised by the CCTV state, or “parking warden culture”, as one might call it. It is important to understand, however, that the sort of petty exercise of power has been going on, sometimes unremarked, for years. So I certainly don’t feel sorry for myself. I am, more than anything else, depressed at the fatuity of “security theatre” policing. It must, at one level surely, gnaw away at the morale and self respect of decent coppers. But there is no doubt that the role and status of the police has changed and so has the type of person that might be attracted to making a career in it.
I must say I am still stunned by the open admission of one commenter on my earlier posting that random searches are good for “fishing expeditions”. We were not very kind to him on the previous thread. Justifiably.
For a good take on what has been going on with policing in the US, Gene Healy of the CATO Institute think tank has a sharp analysis. Several US readers expressed their horror at what is happening here in Britain; I am afraid that things are not so great in parts of the US, either. And as for France, etc…..
Random searches of Britons going about their business are now established features of life in this country. The old refrain – “It could not happen here”, no longer applies. On Saturday, while driving along the side of the Thames towards Westminster, passing by the Tate Gallery, I was flagged down by a policeman.
Officer: “Could you show me your driving licence? This is a section 41 search” (at least I think that is what he said).
Me: “Section 41 or whatever of what?”
Officer: “The Terrorism Act”
Me: “Why have you pulled me and my wife over?”
Officer: “We are doing searches of vehicles in the area.”
Me: “Well obviously you are. Is this a random thing?”
Officer: “Yes. Please hand over your driving licence and we want to search the car.”
They searched the car, called up the driving licence authority, and were able to their enormous satisfaction confirm that I was whom I said I was. I was then asked to sign a document stating that the search had been carried out as it should have been. The officer gave me his name, rank and police station number and address. When I signed the form, he asked me how I wanted to classify myself as there were about 15 options, including “White British”. He was polite. My treatment was fine. The officer and his colleagues told me they were on duty, searching vehicles, for the rest of the day and into the evening.
Now I will spare you a rant about the impertinence of this. You can, gentle reader, assume as a matter of course that I regard such random searches of members of the public as impertinent. What makes me wonder, though, is what on earth the supporters of such searches expect? Do they honestly, really believe that would-be terrorists will be deterred, frightened off or caught? Unless the police put up roadblocks across London, at god-knows what disruption and cost, I do not see how doing this on one of many major roads will cause a blind bit of difference.
This is what has been called “security theatre”: lots of action signifying little. Even the copper who carried out the search had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed.
Update: One commenter has complained that I am getting all upset for no good reason and has used the argument that this sort of behaviour is okay as it can act as a “fishing” expedition to unearth potentially other crimes. It is hard to summon breath to deal with such a brazen argument in favour of abolishing the idea that one is presumed innocent until otherwise.
Update 2: a reader asked for further details on the search. From the time I was pulled over to being let on my way, the process lasted 15 minutes. The police officer’s colleague called up the driving licence authority to give them my licence registration number and the authority took about 10 minutes to get back. An officer opened the car boot, rummaged around some bags and luggage – I was travelling up to Cambridge with my wife – and had a look inside the car. They also inspected my clothes and checked my footwear. They did not ask me to open the glove compartment of the car. They also did not look under the car with a mirror or anything similar, or look under the bonnet.
Matthew Parris makes an eloquent argument that Gordon Brown is an empty shell. Strip away the bullying, the glowering, “oh god just how wonderfully serious I am” pose, the desk-thumping assertiveness, you have very little. Parris argues that there is no organising philosophical principle that animates this man. As Margaret Thatcher might have put it, he has no anchor.
Parris’ argument is quite persuasive. Outside the MSM, bloggers, such as ahem, yours truly, have been unimpressed for years by this man’s supposed towering intellect and grasp of facts. But, unlike Parris, I do think there is a sort of core philosophy that Brown has. The problem, however, is that this “core” philolosophy is just too awful to dwell upon for very long. He is a worshipper of the state and its power to bring about his vision of an egalitarian, puritanical, work-for-work’s sake country. It is not a totally bleak vision: no doubt Brown believes people will be happy in such a country – I just cannot believe he is so malevolent up as to actually want people to be miserable – but the blessings of such a state of affairs are not immediately apparent.
That said, it is easy to wonder why people might wander whether much goes on of very great interest inside Brown’s head. Take the recent deceit of the UK electorate over the EU Constitution, sorry Treaty. As a result of signing this Treaty, a wide number of powers will be transferred to the EU and away from parliament. Now the likes of Brown crave power and although they may hope to join the EU gravy train eventually, that hope may not come to pass. So why are British politicians, even Scottish ones with a historical grudge against England, so keen to sign away such large chunks of influence and power? What, in short, is the point?
Let’s get this straight. The house price bubble has been caused by money printing. In today’s world, that means as a result of the Bank of England keeping interest rates artificially low. That’s why the money supply is growing at more than 10% a year and this money has to go somewhere. Lots of it has gone into the housing market. And the “solution” from all of the above is more of the same!
Those who are going to pay for this mess are the prudent, those who haven’t lived beyond their means. Their savings will be inflated away to bail out the welfare bums, many of whom are economic illiterates infesting the business world.
– David Farrer names and shames a bunch of granny muggers
I seldom recommend TV to anyone. But I caught this last night – or it caught me – and I think many readers, able through the wonders of the internet to see the whole thing lawfully, will be interested to do so.
It is the sort of serious programming that the BBC used to be famous for: a depiction and explanation using clips of films and still photographs taken by diplomats and other visitors, of the strange anachronistic religious-feudal state that existed in Tibet in the late 30s and the 40s, and how it came to be annexed by the People’s Republic of China.
No-one seeing this will find it easy to make sense of the Chinese official claim that Tibet has ‘been part of China for 800 years’. Welsh readers will note that Wales has been administratively part of England for 800 years, in a much clearer sense, but that does not mean they have to like it or feel English. Bordelais readers (who are old enough) will recall that they certainly were under the English crown 800 years ago, but that does not mean they still are. History is not monotonic. And neither Aberystwyth nor Aquitaine, language apart, has for centuries had institutions wholly alien to an Englishman; whereas Tibet was clearly fascinatingly weird to everyone else only 60 years ago.
Sir Karl Popper is not really a participant in the contemporary professional philosophical dialogue; quite the contrary, he has ruined that dialogue. If he is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over have wasted or are wasting their intellectual careers. The gulf between Popper’s way of doing philosophy and that of the bulk of contemporary professional philosophers is as great as that between astronomy and astrology.
– W. W. Bartley, Philosophia (September–December 1976)
There is a deeply revealing article in the Telegraph written by the Chinese Ambassador to Britain, Fu Ying, called ‘Western media has demonised China‘. It is fascinating because it reveals the same psychopathology on display that I wrote about on Samizdata when many Chinese people reacted badly to a ‘disrespectful’ image of Mao (debatably the most prolific mass murderer in human history) which was used in a Spanish car advertisement. The ambassador pains a picture of wounded feelings over the protests launched against Olympic torch carriers…
My daughter, who loves Western culture, must have used the word “why” dozens of times in our long online chat. Her frustration could be felt between the lines. Many who had romantic views about the West are very disappointed at the media’s attempt to demonise China. We all know demonisation feeds a counter-reaction. I do pray from the bottom of my heart that the younger generation of Chinese will not be totally disillusioned about the West, which remains an important partner in our ongoing reform.
And to Fu Ying, the Chinese state and the Chinese people are simply the same thing (a profoundly fascist attitude I might add), so to her, protesting the Chinese government’s policy of maintaining the colonial occupation of Tibet is the same as protesting against the Chinese people itself. She, and a great many other people alas, cannot truly conceive of the notion that hostility to the Chinese state because of its actions does not imply any insult to or hostility to Chinese people simply because they are Chinese, because to any non-collectivist, the Chinese state is a political construct, not some expression of the Chinese soul, or some such metaphysical drivel.
The western media are not demonising China because China’s demons are generally home grown. The Chinese state has moved from full blown communism to a less mundanely repressive nationalistic fascism, but it is still a state which brooks no rival power centres of any sort, be they the Falan Gong, Dalai Lama or Roman Catholic Church let alone any real political movements. Moreover it demands, with considerable success, an atavistic loyalty based on ethnicity that Chinese people see themselves as extensions of the state. As a result Fu Ying’s claims of widespread insult and incomprehension by Chinese people is almost certainly true enough, but the issue here is not ‘us’ understanding China, it is China understanding the rest of the world. Until a critical mass of Chinese people can think their way past mental collectivisation and realise they are not the Chinese state, the genuine modernisation the Ambassador craves will remain an illusion no matter how many skyscrapers they build.
A British court has ruled that there is a ‘right to life’ even under combat conditions and therefore the families of soldiers killed in action can sue the government for not providing suitable equipment.
In a blow to Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, a senior judge said troops in combat zones have a “right to life” at all times, even while under fire on the battlefield. The ground-breaking decision could lead to a flood of cases against the Ministry of Defence from relatives who believe the deaths of their loved ones were caused by poor quality kit.
As I have written before, it is deplorable that British soldiers are sent into action so poorly equipped when the state manages to find money for idiotic sports and ‘cultural’ expenditures. Yet I think this ruling is very dangerous unless it is very tightly defined to only cover equipment issues, and even then, I can hear the sound of cans opening and worms escaping. Inevitably this ‘right to life at all times’ means relatives will sue on the basis of operational military decisions if a decision causes the death of British soldiers.
Were I the government I would do whatever it takes to overturn such a notion and made sure this judgement does not lead to ever wider ‘interpretation’, as such things are wont to do. I am all for properly equipping Britain’s soldiers but this is a potentially disastrous way to ensure that. Wars are, by their very nature, messy and imprecise things and the idea of having civil courts sticking their beaks in is a giant step towards making the military unable to function at all. Even from the perspective of rights and liberty, in a volunteer military clearly prior consent is present to be put in harm’s way within the military context. This ruling has ‘horrendous unintended consequences’ written all over it.
|
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