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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Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that’s what we’re dealing with.
– Steven Guilbeault, Greenpeace 2005, as quoted by Canada Free Press
Afterwards, another activist clarified the remark by stating that of course taller can also be evidence of shortness, richer can mean living in poverty, baboons can mean chairs, giraffes can mean pencils and hello Ms. Robinson, your lacy trousers are well buttered with smoked trout, can you hear what I’m writing with my toaster?
“One day, there will be a woman worth electing to the White House. But not this one.”
– Andrew Sullivan. His observations on the contrast between Senator Clinton, and Margaret Thatcher, are spot-on.
Gorgeous pouting Blair babe, Caroline Flint MP, is shocked by her discovery, on becoming housing minister, that 50% of adults in ‘social housing’ (i.e. directly or indirectly state-subsidised rental property) are unemployed. She wants them to be forced to look for work on pain of losing their tenancies.
Leave aside the typical New Labour paternalism (“You! You, there! Do what we think you should do or we will punish you”), it is the apparent incomprehension of the life of the poor from someone who purports to represent their interests , was a trades union research officer for eight years, and has been in parliament for 10. Does she have especially efficient caseworkers who keep her well-insulated? Or is she just grossly innumerate, mimophantic and patronising, even for a member of the political class?
Of course a huge proportion of those in social housing are unemployed. It would be obvious to anyone not in receipt of massive tax-free housing benefits themselves, that if you have small income, then you will live wherever is cheapest. And social housing rents are the cheapest there are, even cheaper especially after housing benefit is applied. Even if you want to sleep on the streets, New Labour has probably tidied you up.
50% of those in social housing are unemployed naturally enough because nearly 100% of people who are unemployed for any length of time are going to end up in social housing as the best deal available to them. And available to them as a priority. I might be tempted to save £250 quid a week and move to the slightly less pretty environment 100 yards away – but it ain’t available to the likes of me. That is true whether their reason for unemployment is idleness, or genuine incapacity, or rational reaction to the benetax system making them worse off taking low-waged work.
Changing those conditions and letting people make a new set of their own choices is unthinkable. In our new age of moralitarianism, you are to be personally monitored, and if not doing whatever is deemed good for you, you shall be personally compelled. A British mutawa, a department for the suppression if vice and promotion of virtue, cannot be far away. The values of non-smoking, non-drinking, sexually orderly, cautious on-line, un-inquisitive, skill-seeking, non-migrant, safety-conscious, nothing-to-hide-nothing-to-fear, pro-social “hard-working families” must be defended against the pollution of those who practice other – a fortiori bad – lifestyles.
The swing voters are on the ends, not in the middle. Take a good look at this chart.
Notice that the Democratic voter turnout is a steady trend. Not Ross Perot or Ralph Nader appears to have affected the Democratic base turnout. It looks quite reasonable to interpret that third party candidates do not pick off Democratic voters, but rather people who otherwise would not have voted or would have voted Republican.
On the other hand, look at the Republican voter turnout. During a time when the Democrats went from 37.4 to 44.9 million in a trend that projects in both directions, the Republicans went from 54.5 to 39.1 million. The explanation is a simple one. The Republican party does not have a ‘base’. If they do, it is so small that it is below the radar.
Put another way, Democrats vote for their party come what may. Republicans vote, or very importantly stay home, based on the candidates and their principles, not party loyalty. This comment thread on Rachel Lucas with well over 400 mostly thoughtful comments shows the depth of the division. Even here on Samizdata there are commenters who say things like:
… “true” conservatives piss me off. And if there is one thing I can count on, it’s that McCain will knee them in the nuts when needed. Who the hell do these self righteous ass hats think they are?
My answer? We are individuals. We vote with our mind, not ‘our’ party. And you will not win without us.
I said some time back that the only Republican candidate capable of winning the big race was Thompson. Obviously, I did not make that prediction based on poll numbers naming him as their first choice. I made that prediction based on the poll numbers that did not give him an absolute negative. Well, that and the obvious fact that the swing voters are on the ends, not the middle. Had he been the Republican candidate, a popular majority would almost certainly have found him to be the preferred candidate. No other candidate can avoid the rejection of substantial numbers of voters that the RNC claims are Republicans. Because Republican strategists are forgetting something. Many of ‘their’ voters do not belong to the Republican party. We belong to ourselves. And that is how we vote. If Fred is still on the ballot in your state, it is not too late to vote that way.
…All the wonderful tools of liberty. But… but… I see not a single example of that German-Swiss engineering marvel, the SIG-226, as featured on this blog’s masthead!
If you are of a conspiracy orientation, you are going to love this report I just picked up off a network admin mail list:
A fourth submarine cable in the middle east was damaged Sunday between Haloul, Qatar and Das, United Arab Emirates.
This is in addition to the damage affecting FLAG, SAE-ME-WE4, FALCON cables.
After reviewing surveillance video of the area, Egypt’s ministry of maritime transportation is reporting no ships were near the FLAG or SAE-ME-WE4 cables 12-hours before or after the cable damage near Alexandria, Egypt. The reason for outage of the cables has not been identified yet.
Did anyone notice the NSA black-ops sub leaving the area (I should add a smiley here… I think)?
More information can be found here. There has also been a suggestion this report may be an ‘echo’ of a previous report caused by mis-communication across language barriers. I have no idea myself.
We now cue the Secret Squirrel theme and search for our tin hats as ‘The Galloping Beaver’ asks: “Where is the USS Jimmy Carter?”
These things tend to move in cycles, but one expression I think ought to be killed off, deleted, removed, or otherwise expunged from financial affairs is “off-balance sheet”. What this term means, at least according to Wikipedia,, are assets or liabilities that are not recorded on the balance sheet of a company’s accounts but ring-fenced in a separate, legal entity. But in fact what has turned out to be the case is that in the end, these things tend not to be very “off” any balance sheet at all. Take Britain’s private finance initiative (PFI), in which private companies bid to carry out government-funded contracts like building roads or hospitals, operate said facilities for a period of time – like 10 years – and then return them to the State’s control. The government is able to get things built, but, oh so wonderfully, the debt that the government may have to shoulder for the cost of paying for these things is “off-balance” sheet. Marvellous. Many of the banks now mired in the credit crunch ran complex-sounding things called SIVs (structured investment vehicles), which were “off balance sheet”; by using derivatives to insure their debt risks, they also moved a lot of liabilities “off balance sheet”. But in the end, come the economic storms, this will not work. Sooner or later, back to the balance sheet these things must go.
As Ayn Rand might have put it, if you evade the facts of reality, sooner or later they will bite you. That applies to accounting as much as anything else. I wonder if I can move my mortgage or credit card bill “off my balance sheet”. Somehow I don’t see that working out too well.
The inimitable Guido Fawkes decides to use Samizdata to explain what he is… and what he is not.
Over on the misnamed Liberal Conspiracy blog ‘Gracchi’ proffers a serious and fair minded critique of my Guido alter ego’s oeuvre, rather than the usual “Guido is an evil baby eating Nazi who once voted Tory, does not use trackbacks and deletes comments” tripe. I will give it a reply here and defend my approach.
Clearly we all have a political agenda of some kind. Mine is the politics of anti-politics. It stems from wanting to expand the non-political space in life and culture. This flows from my belief in the primacy of individual liberty.
The charge of partisanship does have some validity, I would rather get this shower in government out, but the choice on offer is hardly compelling. It is not as if there was any attempt on my part to pretend to some kind of impartial objectivity. So far as the right-of-centre leaning blogosphere has any influence on the Tories it is often attacking from the ‘right’ of the Tory centre of gravity. The Samizdatistas despair of the Tories, Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome is more hawkish and less socially liberal than his party, even Iain Dale is more Thatcherite than the Tory leadership and my views on tax cuts, the minimal state, free migration and drug prohibition position me in a very different place on the political spectrum to the Tories. It is inimical to Toryism for instance to be a republican, so to characterise me as a Tory seems intellectually lazy to the point of cretinous.
I have written no ideological essays for nearly two decades. There are some still available from the Libertarian Alliance if you are interested – on human rights, the economics of the City and most famously acid house culture.
Gracchi is right to nuance the self-interest charge against politicians, they are more precisely motivated by “perceived self-interest”. I will adopt that phrase from now on. As for my understanding about policy development and the importance of wonks, well I have lived in that world, financially supported think tanks and indeed worked for think tanks in my youth. I just do not advertise it.
The rest of the complaint is based on a poor premise, on the evidence of Guido’s blog I am naive, according to Gracchi. Do you mean Paul Staines or the Guido personality? You are confusing the character with the author. The blog provides a tabloid sensationalist, personality driven narrative. It is meant to entertain in order to be populist. Carefully nuanced argumentation is not what it is about. Complaining that it is populist and not what blogging should aspire to, is like complaining that the New York Post is not the New York Times. You do your thing, Guido will do his thing.
Of course the irony is that more intellectuals, wonks and political thinkers read Guido’s blog than the New Statesman. In Gramscian terms Guido’s blog is now arguably the more important ‘site of struggle’. Discuss.
A new bill in Mississippi would make it illegal for restaurants to serve obese customers.
The legislation, introduced by three members of the state’s House of Representatives, would allow health inspectors to revoke the licence of any restaurant that “repeatedly” feeds extremely overweight people.
SCENE: Int. Day. A diner somewhere in Mississippi. A customer enters and sits down. The waitress approaches.
WAITRESS: What do you need, honey?
CUSTOMER: Hi, I’d like a steak, please, with some french fries and a side order of cole…
WAITRESS: Whoa, whoa, whoa….back up, fatboy. Everything’s off.
CUSTOMER: Everything??!!
WAITRESS: I can bring you some water.
CUSTOMER: But I’m famished.
WAITRESS: I don’t make the rules, sweetie.
CUSTOMER: But that man over there is eating a club sandwich.
WAITRESS: That man over there has a 32-inch waist. See the sign? ‘No six-pack, no lunch pack’.
CUSTOMER: Isn’t there anything you can bring me?
WAITRESS: ‘Lose the guts. No ifs, no buts’.
CUSTOMER: But, look, I’m not fat, I’m just big-boned.
WAITRESS (calling out): Joe, bring me out the calipers.
CUSTOMER: Okay, okay. Listen, its my glands. I’ve got a glandular problem. Can I help it if my glands won’t work properly?
WAITRESS: You’re wasting my time here, honey. I’ve got plenty of slim, healthy customers to serve.
CUSTOMER: Oh please! I’m starving.
WAITRESS: Not starving enough, sweetie.
CUSTOMER: Can’t I just have some bacon and eggs? Please? Oh come on, pleeeeeeeease?
WAITRESS: Listen, I’d like to help you. Tell you what, come in again next week and if you’ve dropped maybe five, six pounds, I can serve you a cup of black coffee and maybe a slice of dry toast. How’d that be?
ENDS.
On Saturday various Samizdata team members and associates descended upon HQ for copious amounts of wine, chilli and cheese.
The party commences.
The goddess Elena holds fort.
Samizdata’s infamous bar.
Tomas Kohl drops in on us from the Czech Republic.
China’s hottest export.
There’s something important on the computer.
Readers of Brian’s blog are surging.
The Briffas – Peter Briffa is the purveyor of the fine Public Interest blog.
By 3:30am, everyone had fallen asleep apart from the guardian hippo.
Americans: Do not fear, you are not going to lose a conservative President next January and no conservative is going to be defeated on Super Tuesday.
First I must point out that this posting is not about Congressman Dr Ron Paul – no offence meant, I am just not going to be writing about him here. The United States will not lose a conservative President next January because George Walker Bush is no conservative.
No shock there – he is the man who gave the Republic such things as “No-Child-Left-Behind” and the Medicare extension (and so much other stuff). But just how un-conservative President Bush is was brought home to me by watching the rerun of the ‘Bush Special’ on FNC.
President Bush was asked about his 30 billion Dollar aid package for Africa and he replied that he had pushed it into effect because it was a religious moral duty to give to the poor and because terrorism was bred by poverty – the money would keep people away from the “ideology of hate”, which could never convince people with a chance in life. Mrs Bush then said something about a healthy workforce being good for the economy of these various African nations… → Continue reading: Conservative rule will not end next January, and no Conservative will lose on Super Tuesday
There was an interesting but infuriating article in The Times by Simon Jenkins today where he describes the current state of affairs in Afghanistan. The shorter Jenkins is that things are not going very well. The crux of the problem is that Nato’s force in Kabul is in shambles with the United States and the United Kingdom in disagreement over their basic strategy, the Canadians having had enough, and the Continental Europeans contributing more trouble then they are worth.
But what really struck my nerve with this article was the praise that Jenkins heaps on the Taleban adversaries. He describes them as the ‘toughest fighters’ on earth. I am admittedly not qualified to pass judgement on that score, but I would have to question the real fighting skill of men who are barely literate, fed or able to maintain basic hygiene. Given the disarray that NATO forces are in, and the difficulties that they are inflicting on themselves, it is no wonder that a numerically larger, motivated and home based insurgency is able to maintain a serious military challenge.
If the challenge posed by the Taleban is to be met by NATO or the government of Afghanistan, then NATO have to take this crisis seriously. The chances of this happening are approximately zero, of course, so the rational thing to do is to look forward to the day when the Taleban regain power in Afghanistan. Given the total bankruptcy of NATO’s military strategy and the weakness of the United States, it is likely that terrorists will regain their safe haven in Central Asia in the medium term.
Such an outcome would be to the total discredit of Western political leadership. Had they committed a serious military effort to Afghanistan, and united behind a common strategy, Afghanistan would have settled down under corrupt but peaceful leadership years ago. But there is no evidence of any politician in the West taking Afghanistan seriously.
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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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