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Due to waves of (mostly) Russian spam hitting our server, the Samizdata SmiteBot is has been grumpy for several days now beyond my ability to manually intervene every time. This means it has been shooting on sight (or maybe on site) & asking questions later. If your comment vanished, now you know why. Do not take it personally unless you are a Russian spammer, in which case take it personally.
March 13th, 2026 | Leave a comment
 Ill fares the land. Ominous tidings abound, such as MPs giving ministers powers to restrict the entire internet, World War III breaking out, and Winston Churchill being replaced by a badger. But who could fail to feel hope stir in their bosom when the headline “Zack Polanski repeated claim hypnosis can increase breast size, BBC interview reveals” is a serious and genuinely consequential piece of political news? Polanski the politician can be judged by the fact that he wants to arrest the president of Israel and build a relationship with Vladimir Putin. It becomes ever-clearer that before Polanski was a charlatan in politics he was simply a charlatan. But I am not convinced that his claim to have inflated women’s breasts by mesmerism is truly culpable. He seems to have half-believed it himself, alongside a more plausible theory that what he was actually doing was increasing the women’s self-confidence. There do not seem to have been many complaints from his customers. At some level I expect they understood that what they were buying from him was an hour with someone who would listen to them and then say soothing words. He should have stuck with his previous, more honourable profession. “With my help you can wish your boobs bigger” is less of a lie than “This time, rent control will work”. March 11th, 2026 | 35 comments
Brian Micklethwait’s blogs fell off the internet a while back for reasons not entirely clear. Some of them I had scraped, and have now republished on the Brian Micklethwait Archive site. For now we have:
I am hoping to add Brian Micklethwait’s New Blog at some point. Navigation might not be ideal right now, but all the posts are there. Searchability should appear over the next few days. I have more to say about how the conversion from dynamic blog site to static archive was achieved: coming soon. March 11th, 2026 | 8 comments
The response to the Iran-Hezbollah drone attack on Britain’s Royal Air Force Base in Cyprus earlier this month has been revealing. For the first time since 1980, Britain had no warships in the eastern Mediterranean or the Gulf. Air defences were effectively absent. The UK’s main carrier strike group was still en route to Greenland. Britain ended up having to rely on Greece and France to help secure its own military base. That is not evidence of foreign capture. It is evidence of institutional incompetence. March 9th, 2026 | 17 comments
The truth of course is that ‘Net Zero’ is an article of faith. A state religion masquerading as a moral crusade despite the evidence it is expensive, ineffective, and generally regressive. Low carbon subsidies transfer wealth from the general population to landowners and corporations. It’s state socialism delivering a caricature of pre-Corn Laws Toryism. March 8th, 2026 | 16 comments
Maybe I imagined it. I thought I saw the first few seconds of a scary video, either put out by the Home Office “Prevent” scheme or by some NGO with a similar remit. The video featured a teenage actor – white and male, obviously – portraying a boy lamenting that he had got a criminal record after impulsively posting hate speech online. I remembered the title as being something like “It just takes a few seconds to get a criminal record” or “It only takes a few words to get a criminal record”. From what little I saw of it, the video seemed more sinister than 99% of the hate speech it aimed to combat – because it was not put out by some Twitter-addled rando with thirteen followers but by His Majesty’s government, or an organisation closely associated with the same. Ya know how it is. I just saw a second or two and thought, “I might blog about that”, but I was too busy to note it down. And now it’s disappeared. I put a query into CoPilot, which might have been unwise, and got this:
The link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8hE1G9FqJw says “This video isn’t available anymore” That “anymore” suggests it did once exist, but I am beginning to wonder if I did not hallucinate the whole thing and spur the A.I. to join in my hallucination by means of my prompts. Assuming I did not imagine it, can I get this video back from the void? I’ve tried the Wayback Machine without success. UPDATE: That was quick. My thanks to commenter nbc who said, “This one?” Yes. This one. https://xcancel.com/Steve_Laws_/status/2029317472059359438 It took me about a second of scrolling down from that post to find views expressed by Steve Laws that I strongly disagreed with. For instance, he mocks Laurence Fox for saying, in the context of the child-killer Ian Huntley being attacked and killed by another prisoner, that even the most depraved criminals should be protected from vigilante justice in prison. Steve Laws appears to be an actual far-right person. They do exist. But as I have said before, “if there is a truth respectable people shy away from mentioning, do not be surprised when the despicable people who will say it aloud are listened to.” The video appears to have been put out by the police rather than the Home Office, and shows a boy – not “a boy” in the sense of “a young man”; a child of about thirteen – tearfully saying “I just got all my devices taken away by the police. My mum couldn’t believe it. I might get a criminal record and not be able to go to college. I only shared a link. I just thought it was funny. But it was terrorist content, and that is not a game, it’s real life.” That is a deeply sinister message for the police to be putting out, particularly in that it is aimed at children. ANOTHER UPDATE: Ted Schuerzinger has provided a direct link to the video: https://www.instagram.com/terrorismpolice/reel/DVd1g1bkg7I/. It came from an Instagram account called “terrorismpolice”. The final frame shows a police logo and the words:
and the caption to the Instagram video says,
Two questions occur to me: 1) Why was the video removed from YouTube? Hostile comments? 2) Is the video an accurate portrayal of the likely “real-world consequences of sharing harmful extremist content online” when the sharer is a child and the content is something the child shares because they think it is funny? If it is not an accurate portrayal, then the police officers or police employees who made the video are deliberately frightening children with misinformation regarding the law. People have had the police turn up at their doors to issue a “friendly warning” for less. If, however, it is an accurate portrayal of the real world – that is, if children really are being given criminal records for sharing (not creating, sharing) comic memes of whose extremist origin they were unaware, then we are further along than even I thought. March 7th, 2026 | 11 comments
Message from BitChute: Due to what we view as ongoing harassment from Ofcom, as well as our unwillingness to cooperate with a regime we view as hostile to our values and principles, we have disabled all remaining comment access entirely for UK video creators. To our valued users in the United Kingdom, after careful review and ongoing evaluation of the regulatory landscape in the United Kingdom, we regret to inform you that BitChute will be discontinuing its video sharing service for UK residents. The introduction of the UK Online Safety Act of 2023 has brought about significant changes in the regulatory framework governing online content and community interactions. Notably, the Act contains sweeping provisions and onerous corrective measures with respect to content moderation and enforcement. In particular, the broad enforcement powers granted to the regulator of communication services, Ofcom, have raised concerns regarding the open-ended and unpredictable nature of regulatory compliance for our platform. The BitChute platform has always operated on principles of freedom of speech, expression and association, and strived to foster an open and inclusive environment for content creators and audiences alike. However, the evolving regulatory pressures—including strict enforcement mechanisms and potential liabilities—have created an operational landscape in which continuing to serve the UK market exposes our company to unacceptable legal and compliance risks. Despite our best efforts to navigate these challenges, the uncertainty surrounding the OSA’s enforcement by Ofcom and its far-reaching implications leaves us no viable alternative but to cease normal operations in the UK. Therefore, effective immediately, BitChute platform users in the UK will no longer be available to view content produced by any other BitChute user. Because the OSA’s primary concern is that members of the public will view content deemed unsafe, however, we will permit UK BitChute users to continue to post content. The significant change will be that this UK user-posted content will not be viewable by any other UK user, but will be visible to other users outside of the UK. Users outside the UK may comment on that content, which the creator will continue to be able to read, delete, block, reply and flag. Users outside the UK may share UK-user produced content to other users outside of the UK as normal. In other words, for users in the UK, including content creators, the BitChute platform is no longer a user-to-UK user video sharing service. We deeply regret the inconvenience and disappointment this decision may cause to our UK users and partners. This decision was not taken lightly. It reflects our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of compliance, protecting our community, and ensuring that our platform remains a safe and sustainable space for creative expression globally. We recognize the value of our UK community and extend our sincerest apologies for the disruption caused by this necessary step. Our support team remains available to answer any queries or concerns regarding this transition. Thank you for your understanding. So… use a VPN if you are in the UK to access BitChute videos (of which there are many on Samizdata). March 6th, 2026 | 9 comments
There is far more heat energy in a swimming pool than in a pan of boiling water. You can boil an egg in the pan. You can’t boil an egg in the pool. And if you doubled the size of the pool, you’d double the energy available — and still have a cold, raw egg. This is not a riddle. It is the single most important concept in the energy debate, and almost nobody making energy policy understands it. […] The proposal to replace gas and nuclear with wind and solar reverses the direction of every successful energy transition in human history. It moves down the density ladder, deliberately, and hopes for the best. That is what I mean when I say current energy policy is in a head-on collision with physics. Read the whole thing. March 5th, 2026 | 55 comments
Green Party policy is to “Abolish Landlords”, only they say they don’t really mean it, only they do.Dean Conway has written a supportive article for Central Bylines about the Green Party’s eye-catching new housing policy:
I’m getting a “defund the police” vibe. Tell the base that the slogan means exactly what it says, while telling the rubes that it doesn’t, with scope to row back on either position when convenient. By the way, here is the Greens’ policy on migration, as stated on their website:
That policy would increase the need for rented housing rather a lot. March 4th, 2026 | 18 comments
Taylor Lorenz is the one who doxxed Libs of TikTok, who came this close to lionising the murderer Luigi Mangione, and who for some reason habitually lies about her age, but she makes some excellent points in this article: “The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all”. Excerpt:
March 2nd, 2026 | 10 comments
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