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‘Petrol Price Rise Announced’ blares the BBC Headline:
So it isn’t a ‘price rise’ at all. It’s a tax increase I think the public has a right to be told in less ambivalent terms. September 25th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Ministers are preparing legislation for the next session of parliament to make local authorities create files on every child in England, including intimate personal information about parents’ relationships with other partners and any criminal record, alcohol or drug abuse in the extended family. The files will be available to teachers, social workers, NHS staff and other professionals dealing with children to help them piece together symptoms of neglect or abuse that might require intervention by the authorities. The green paper produced as a response to the murder of Victoria Climbié, an eight-year-old who died in London in 2000 after months of torture and neglect, said the need to protect children had to be balanced against preserving the privacy of parents. But Charles Clarke, the education secretary, said yesterday that the interests of children “absolutely” took precedence over the civil liberties of adults. Mark Littlewood, the campaigns director of Liberty, said Mr Clarke’s remarks were even more disturbing than the green paper.
September 25th, 2003 | Comments are closed
Another ‘truth’ constantly parroted at us is bin Laden would never work with Saddam. As with the bin Laden was trained by the CIA meme, it can be difficult to remember or find the refuting evidence when you need it. Fortunately, someone has done it for us. It is a good summary, but Richard Miniter (author of Losing bin Laden) left out at least one item. September 25th, 2003 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Adam Smith Institute Weblog seems to have hit the ground running, and Jonny Fraser’s piece about harassment in the USA by cops and bureaucrats and stupid laws is provoking a fine old comment fest. Quote:
I particularly liked Kevin Carson’s comment, responding to American critics of American critics. Final paragraph:
It is good that the ASI blog is not confining itself to municipal bus privatisation and such like. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. September 25th, 2003 | Comments are closed
Most people have an implicit, nebulous, and generally unthought through understanding of the media and what their job is. It has to do something with getting the facts and reporting the truth or at least the reality to the best of their abilities. The media is a sort of civilian intelligence agency. This is how the military, in particular, view them and when the media are not reporting the facts, they are seen as failing in their job. The media do not see their job in this light at all. Their job is to find and sell stories. Of course, these should not be completely divorced from the facts, but facts are merely the raw materials of the stories. More importantly, the media do not feel obliged to report all the facts, especially in a place like Iraq, where there is either very intense competition among reporters and therefore not much time to investigate the story in detail. Alternatively, the interest is fading a bit, so it is not worth investing the time. Either way, the result is the same. What has become obvious to me while in Basra and helped me understand the media better is that they have now decided what their story is in Iraq. They have signed up this story as their product before they even arrive. They are not there to research ‘the facts’ – they are merely looking to illustrate their story. → Continue reading: The media story September 25th, 2003 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Please, prepare yourselves for a shock. Sit down on a comfortable chair and secure that goldfish. For I’m about to rock your world. Yes, friends, some EU corruption has been discovered within the gilded halls of Strasbourg. I know, it beggers belief, but there it is. Millions of €uros have apparently been diverted into slush funds to pay for holidays, freebies, and extravagant dinners. So, who are the thieves? This money was allegedly stolen by the EU’s own number crunchers. Whisper it quietly to your friends, but apparently they left no audit trail, too! Quelle horreur! And some of the money stolen was used to form a volleyball team! Crikey. I was sitting on the train, this morning, minding my own business, and this story hove into view. It was such a non-event, such a non-story, that at first it completely passed me by. For I was under the mistaken impression that the entire EU budget already was a giant slush fund, for useless bureaucrats such as Neil Kinnock to dip their greedy snouts into. But I was wrong. Apparently, it is just the EU number crunchers who are corrupt! Thank goodness for that. I’ve been labouring under a misapprehension, all this time. Fortunately, EU officials have said a full judicial inquiry will establish whether senior number crunching staff have indeed stolen EU funds. No doubt the results from this inquiry will be swift, and the punishments severe. Let’s hope they make some of these naughty number crunchers fly business class, for a change, rather than first class. For at least a whole week. They deserve nothing less.  September 25th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Samizdata.net often makes references to the importance of the ‘meta-context’ in explaining and determining events around us. A question to consider: What would happen if the mainstream media were somehow forced to refer to Saddam’s old regime by its own official title, which is The Arab National Socialist Party or Arab NAZI Party? What a thought… September 25th, 2003 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
There seems to be a lot more information floating about now than there was last week. The first Chinese orbital flight might come as soon as October 1st, but probably not until mid month. You may remember I suggested the Chinese will aim for the moon within a few decades. I’m not a lone voice: here is what Space.com has to say:
I’ve some friends that hope to be able to offer them a hotel room with a nice Mare view by that time. September 25th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
With the mayoral election less than a year away I feel it time that I declared my hand. OK, so this is not entirely serious. Any candidacy would need funds, an organisation, assembly candidates and all those involved would have to realise that it wouldn’t have a prayer and that the only purpose of the exercise would be to secure publicity. But if we did have all those things this would be my manifesto. That’s the great thing about manifestos: they’re cheap. Some Observations and Some Basic Principles London is a great city – after all, it’s home to most of Samizdata’s writers. Millions of people would seem to agree with them coming here from all over the world to find a better life for themselves. But London seems to be getting worse when it could be getting a lot better. In particular it suffers from three major problems: crime, transport and property prices. My aim, if elected, would be to: reduce crime by 90%, reduce property prices by 50% and to make getting around the city a simple and predictable (if not necessarily cheap) business. I believe that civilisation is at its best when people are free. It is freedom which promotes prosperity, innovation and responsibility. And yet for 100 years we have been chipping away at freedom, progressively heaping taxation and regulation upon a once free people with results that are all too plain to see. If London is to be better then first it must be free. Housing Property is too expensive. With a three-bedroom house costing six or seven times the average wage, millions are postponing and even abandoning the idea of having children. This is hardly a sustainable state of affairs. Prices are high because demand is high and supply is low. The answer is to increase the supply. If elected I would abolish all planning laws and all building regulations. Immediately, people would start to build. Up mainly. And why not? We shouldn’t be scared of living in flats. Many people around the world enjoy good quality high-rise living where raising a family is as easy and as pleasant as living in a semi-detached. All that we have to do is to allow it to happen. I believe that by scrapping the regulations we will see the development of all sorts of new ideas in architecture as well as a massive increase in capacity. We might well see the development of self-build (people designing their own houses) as is seen in places like France and Spain. Would we lose all our nice old buildings? Some, for sure, but do we really need all of them, especially as there is a chance we might get some nice, new ones in exchange? → Continue reading: Crozier for Mayor September 24th, 2003 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
With David Willetts blowing yet another unsolicited Kiss of Death into the rapidly fading twilight of the UK Conservative Party, it was interesting to hear Polly Toynbee say Willetts had been using the thoughts of our old friend, John Maynard Keynes, to push forward the increasing statism of his latest ideas, such as using coerced taxpayers’ money to subsidise working mothers. No wonder Ms Toynbee has been so taken with Mr “Two Brains” Willetts’ recently published pamphlet. What it contains used to be called social engineering, of the most crude kind, but now it has been re-labelled as compassionate conservatism, and even arch-socialist Ms Toynbee has declared her guarded support. I therefore thought we’d better examine the roots of Mr Willett’s new philosophy, and get an Austrian view on the Keynesianism underlying it. And what better place could we start than Mises.org? → Continue reading: Keynes, the Man September 24th, 2003 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
John Fund of the Wall Street Journal Online has an excellent look at the seamy, sleazy side of the California recall election, and specifically the role of Indian gambling money. If you want an accounting of how politics really gets played in the US, this is a pretty good vignette. Discliamer: John is a pretty loyal Republican, for the most part, but I have met him and I can assure you he is savvy and knows his politics. There are all kinds of lessons in this article. I will leave you with a few to chew on: Note the brazen contempt for campaign finance law by the Bustamente campaign. Where politicians can’t get the money they need through various kinds of gray-market loophole-oriented money-laundering operations designed to evade these laws, they just violate them outright because they know that no enforcement will occur until after the election. Note the heavily cynical and strategic use of political money to build up politicians that the contributors actually want to lose the race, because these dark horses will strip votes from a real rival to the preferred candidate. Money and power will always find each other. The only solution to the kinds of influence peddling activities on display in California is to strip power from the state. September 24th, 2003 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Arnold has finally come out of the closet. In a Wall Street Journal article he states:
He then lays out the key elements of his program:
He then closes with a statement which is difficult to argue with:
Long before the California election I read Mr Schwarzenegger had at least slight libertarian leanings. Given this statement I feel safe declaring he is a fellow traveller at the very least. The article can be found here. It is well worth reading despite the hassles of getting to it. This is perhaps the first Opinion Journal article I have linked to since they started crashing my browser when I attempt to print to file. In general, I do not refer people to something if I am unable to file a copy for future reference in the all too common case where the link becomes unreachable. September 24th, 2003 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
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