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“I love you, and I am a socialist”
This is what I, via the wonders of television, watched being said to David Cameron.
A young doctor made this comment to Mr Cameron when this leader of a British political party turned up at a demonstration of doctors and, whilst denouncing the Labour party government for not providing jobs for all qualified young doctors, promised “every single one of you” a job (or words to that effect).
To some people the above proves that Mr Cameron is a good leader of the Conservative party, to other people, such as myself, the above shows that David Cameron is not the leader of a ‘Conservative’ party at all.
We see the same facts but interpret them differently.
I recommend the Institute of Economic Affairs latest publication, Patricia Morgan’s ‘The war between the State and the Family: How government divides and impoverishes’.
This is a work in the tradition of such writers as Charles Murray showing how the combination of various government benefits and schemes (rather than any one benefit) have helped undermine the traditional family and increased welfare dependency and poverty, both in Britain and in other countries.
One of the important elements of this little work is that it shows that many of the very people who denounce the increase in inequality (for whilst there has been no great increase in absolute poverty, as the income of a person on benefits today is at least as high as that of many working people in the 1940’s, there has been an increase in inequality) in various Western nations have supported the policies that have undermined families and increased inequality.
Also the work shows how the targeting of the ‘truly needy’, something done by Conservative governments from the start of the 1980’s onwards by, contrary to media reports, increasing government support for such people, had very bad consequences.
Many libertarians may be wary of someone like Patricia Morgan who clearly supports the old style family of wife looking after the children and husband bringing home the money: the dream of the Victorian working class which, by the end of the century, they had largely achieved, and this suspicion may be increased by Dr Morgan’s support for favourable treatment of the traditional family by the tax system; which was something that was only important in a few decades after the World War II – as before the war the majority of families did not pay income tax. But her arguments should not be dismissed out of hand simply because she is a “reactionary”.
Patricia Morgan argues that what has happened over the last few decades in Britain and some other nations (the vast increased in the percentage of births out of wedlock, the growth in one parent households, and the vast growth of dependency on money from the government) is not some ‘natural’ example of ‘social evolution’, but has been driven by government policies – policies of governments of parties of both “left” and “right”.
Certainly Dr Morgan may be attacked for implying that everything was O.K. with the family before the state became involved (as I have stated above the situation where the vast majority of families earned a decent income and were free of government support and abject poverty was an achievement of economic and social development over the Victorian period, it was not always so).
Also Patricia Morgan can be attacked for a Chicago school style ‘economic man’ approach where human beings react to monetary incentives almost (although not quite) to the exclusion of other factors.
However, one does not have to believe that the growth in government support has caused all the negative developments, in Britain and other lands, over the last few decades to believe that it has helped cause them.
With the advance of technology and economic development over the last few decades families should be stronger and poverty should be much less. Just as family life was vastly better in 1901 than it had been in, for example, 1837. Yet who would argue that families are stronger now than they were in say 1960?
Also the changes in behaviour (not just in Britain, but in such nations as the United States, Australia and New Zealand) can often be dated back to the specific years in which there were changes in the benefit structure, and (in the case of the United States) certain changes in benefit structure can be argued to have achieved the ‘impossible’ task of, in certain respects, turning the clock back.
Whilst this does not prove Patricia Morgan’s case beyond all doubt, it does mean that the case of this lady is worth a look.
The webcast has not yet started but will be here when it does.
2218 GMT: T minus 0 seems to have been pushed back to 2330 GMT. I will report as I get news.
2225 GMT: T minus 0 is now set for 0005 GMT; webcast is to begin at approximately 2305 GMT.
2300 GMT: There will be two burns of the second stage, separated by about an hour. The second burn is strictly a test. In operation it would be a correction or plane change or circularization burn. Most importantly, this will prove they have an engine that is restartable in microgravity. This is not as easy to do as you might think…
2307 GMT: Web cast is now live.
2317 GMT: Fuel and oxidizer loads of the first and second stage are in progress. The video signal is having some problems however, as I am sure any watchers will have noticed!
2328 GMT: First stage LOX fill completed.
2331 GMT: First stage fuel load completed.
2336 GMT: This just in: “Media call note that the webcam problems are unknown and this is what you all may be stuck with.”
2339 GMT: Both stages fully loaded with Kerosene (RP1), LOX and Helium tank pressurization .
2348 GMT: T-218 now, Helium top off. The are having some telemetry probs with the stage 1 recovery ship… which has just now been solved.
2350 GMT: All operator stations report ready status for terminal countdown. Cleared for launch!
2356 GMT: Entering terminal count! T-10.
0006 GMT: Terminal count abort after engine ignition. Impressive that they could stop it here, sad that they had to. Will report as I here more.
0016 GMT: This is amazing. They are recyling to T-10!!! I have *never* in my life seen such a thing! Ignition has always been the point of no return or at least a full scrub. I stand in awe.
0021 GMT: Shutdown was due to chamber pressure being 1% low. There was apparently a fair amount of swearing going on… they may still try for a launch. Range is okay with a recycle.
0044 GMT: They are well into the recycle for a second try. Count is still in a hold at T-16 while they recycle.
0056 GMT: The clock is running again. T-14:30!
0057 GMT: Cleared for launch again.
0101 GMT: Into terminal count again at T-10.
0112 GMT: Launch successful! Passing through Max Q. Now the big one coming up is Stage sep…
0114 GMT: THEY DID IT!!!! SECOND STAGE SEP AND FIRE: FARING SEP CONFIRMED!!!!! 117km altitude!!!!
0126 GMT: There is some discussion as to whether the first stage sep bumped the second stage engine bell. There were some signs of oscillation of the engine before it got out of range and the webcast terminated. So they made it into space but we will have to wait to find out if this test flight made orbit.
The Kwajalein launch abort of the SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket yesterday was caused by a minor timing problem that would not have affected the launch. According to Elon Musk:
The abort that occurred a few minutes before T-0 was triggered by our ground control software. It commanded a switchover of range telemetry from landline to radio, which took place correctly, however, because of the hardware involved, this transition takes a few hundred milliseconds. Before it had time to complete, our system verification software examined state and aborted.
I remember the first Space Shuttle launch attempt (STS-1) being scrubbed on first try due to… a software timing glitch between the redundant onboard computers. Certain classes of problems (like LOX valve freeze ups) are just in the nature of the beast, part of the learning curve of a new vehicle and launch control system.
The software fix has been uploaded and a launch attempt is scheduled for 1600 Pacific time today. As I type it is 17:37:32 UTC (GMT) and 10:37:32 AM PDT putting the launch about 5 hours from now. I will return about an hour before launch and give commentary as I did last night.
See you all later!
You have all heard excerpts from Khalid’s testimony… now you can
read the transcript.
Personally I think burying him up to his neck in a pig sty and leaving him there until he dies of excrement ingestion would be the minimum level of punishment he deserves.
Quick, which has a smaller total impact on the environment?
Well, you know if the answer was the Prius, I wouldn’t be posting this. Dog bites man, and all that.
It turns out that, factoring in all costs, that the Hummer is more Gaia-friendly than the Prius. The punch line? Its not even close.
When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer – the Prius’s arch nemesis.
More proof, if any was needed, that much of the modern environmental movement is about being seen to care, rather than actually accomplishing anything.
No no, not money. I need ideas.
I recently agreed to do another chat spot on 18 Doughty Street TV, and like a fool I picked Tuesday March 20th, i.e. this evening, all unaware that tomorrow is Budget Day, and we would all have to talk about the damn Budget. I hate, hate, hate Budget Days and Budgets, and conversations about Budget Day and conversations about Budgets, from the depths of my soul. I find the details of tax law deeply depressing and complicated, not least deeply depressing because so damn complicated. Plus everyone on regular TV drones on about it all for hour after hour, while saying (because knowing) extremely little, like cricket commentators when it is raining only not funny or interesting.
Anyway, I got an email this morning from His IainDaleness which included the following instruction:
We will talk about tomorrow’s budget in the first half hour. Please come armed with three things you’d like the Chancellor to do and three things you think he actually will do.
Any suggestions? I particularly need help with the “he actually will do” bit. Generally, presumably, he will (a) kiss babies and (b) steal their lollypops. (A lollypop for whoever can pin down the movie reference there.) But more precisely, what specific horrors are in the pipeline? I assume a lot of anti-4×4 crap. But what else?
And, of course, suggestions about what he should do will also be trawled through with a view to me using the best of them tonight, probably without credit to the originator.
I think that the entire government down be shut down for ever and taxes lowered to zero. But I think they want something more precise than that. So far, I can only think of saying, again, that The Top Rate of Income Tax Should Be Cut to Zero, which I think is a brilliant idea, if only because it makes the current lot of leftier-than-thou Conservatives squirm.
I am now off to read what UKIP has to say, budget-wise. (So far I have not got beyond the heading. Which should surely say “fiddles” rather than “tinkers”. The Emperor Nero was a violinist, was he not?)
“Hand-feeding is not appropriate to the species and is a grave violation of the animal protection laws,” said Frank Albrecht, an animal rights campaigner. “Legally speaking, the zoo should kill the baby bear. Otherwise it is condemning the bear to a dysfunctional life and that too is a breach of the law.”
– spotted in timesonline by Dizzy
Scott Wickstein notes a priceless piece of bureaucratic imbecility in New Zealand:
A New Zealand council has taken itself to court and successfully been fined $4,800 […] it will pay itself the fine, minus the court’s 10 per cent cut. It has already stumped up $3,000 for pre-trial “outside legal opinion”.
I also enjoyed an anonymous comment left on the post at Scott’s:
I wouldn’t be surprised if they lodge an appeal
…so did the Catholic Church speak up for him?
The BBC reports:
[T]he Catholic head of England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said the government was rushing through the [Equality Act (Sexual Orientation)] regulations – after MPs were asked to approve them without debate.
He accused the government of “an abuse of parliamentary democracy”, adding: “Profound public concern about aspects of these regulations has not been heard.”
Where has His Eminence been for the last decade? The Blair administration has been applying the “programme motion” (pdf explanation) to curtail parliamentary debate and adopting wholesale the device of “framework legislation” to legislate by the nominally endorsed decree dressed up as statutory instrument.
Wave after wave of revolutionary legislation, stamping out liberty in every quarter and establishing imperial inspectorates in place, has gone through on the back of tendentious PLP briefings calling votes from MPs who have not participated in a debate and have no real idea what they are voting on. How come it is only abuse of parliament when it infringes the Catholic Church’s right to tell people what to think about gay sex, by telling them to think something different about it?
The SpaceX flight readiness review has cleared Falcon 1 for launch from Kwajalein at 1600 Pacific Time (US West Coast). As I post it is 19:40:40 UTC here and 12:40:40 PM PDT there. Those who are interested can watch the launch here in about three hours.
They have stated they will scrub today’s launch if there is the tiniest doubt or problem.
2220GMT: Launch is about 40 minutes away and the bird is sitting on the pad with some boil off showing around the interstage. Wish I were there instead of the freezing cold here in Belfast tonight!
2225GMT: I have just read a report that there are some telemetry problems between Kwaj and El Segundo.
2227GMT. They are in a planned hold. Wind is 13 knots at 050.
2239GMT. Still telemetry problems. Most of the engineering eyeballs are at the office in El Segundo rather than onsite, so it could cause a scrub if not solved soon.
2256GMT. Telemetry problem sorted. At the moment we are go for launch today.
2300GMT. T-0 is now set for 2345 GMT.
2305GMT: They have recommenced fueling and you can see the boil off at the interstage and up on the second stage.
2317GMT: Audio on webcast has begun, fueling is reported complete. I see quite heavy venting at the interstage.
2320GMT. Venting at engines visible now. This bird is raring to go!
2330GMT: 15 minutes to go, Everything is green!
2332GMT: Cleared for launch, no more holds in count.
2342GMT: T-4. There are 5600 people watching the live stream.
2345GMT: Terminal count abort. I will let you know when I get some info on why.
2358GMT: Abort due to a range issue. There will be a decision on recycling and continuing within the next 10 minutes or so.
0011GMT: It’s a scrub for today. I will let you know when. It will be at least 24-48 hrs.
0033GMT: Recycle is for 24 hours. See you all tomorrow, same time GMT. Goodnight all!
As odd as it may seem today, there was a time when the Conservative opposition was expected to call for cuts in the levels of taxation if only to pressurise the Labour government into not raising taxes too much or too quickly. Occasionally (very occasionally) they even lived up to this expectation.
But that ‘golden era’ is a long way behind us now:
Gordon Brown is expected to raise taxes substantially on larger-engined cars in Wednesday’s Budget.
Some reports suggest that road tax on the least fuel-efficient cars will double to about £400 a year.
Mr. Brown is not to be blamed. After all, it is sheer foolishness to expect a pig to issue anything but a grunt. No, the man to blame is David Cameron. His pernicious eco-tax manifesto has not only incited a pissing contest with the current Chancellor to see who inflict more punishment on those wicked Gaiacidal motorists, it has also (in electoral terms) legitimised this latest round of pure plunder.
The Tories are the enemies of the people so please remember your ABC (Anyone But Cameron).
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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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