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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I do not know who David Butcher is, but I like him already on the strength of this, that he wrote in the latest Radio Times – which is published, be it noted, by the BBC. It is part of a plug for a programme to be broadcast tonight on BBC2 at 8 pm:
Having enjoyably milked all the clichés about olden times in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Terry Jones makes up for it here. The idea is to put the record straight by presenting portraits of how real life would have been for eight medieval archetypes, starting tonight with the dirty and downtrodden figure of the peasant.
The gist is that things weren’t nearly as bad for feudal serfs as received history and Monty Python films would have you believe. For a start, they had 80 days’ holiday a year, thanks to all those church feast days. And although they were forced to work 50 or so days in a year for their feudal lord, that’s rather less than most of us today work to pay our income tax. By the end of the programme, you may be feeling almost envious.
Well that may be going too far, but I do like that bit there about income tax, measured in days per year. And I bet these guys will be pleased about this kind of talk too.
On a long drive, this morning, I came across an interesting piece on Andrew Marr’s Start the Week programme on BBC Radio Four, a radio station I still cannot quite give up. The thrust of the piece was that free market producers in London’s West End are creating shockingly ‘commercial’ and ‘unoriginal’ shows, and that something should be done about it to make life more interesting for London’s chattering classes. → Continue reading: Krapp’s last government intervention
The reason that there has been relatively little output this evening is that many of the Samizdatistas were at Samizdata HQ rather than at their keyboards, celebrating the start of new business ventures by two of our number…
There was a documentary about the Royal Navy in WWII on tonight, and one image etched itself into my mind. With a sidescan sonar they found the wreck of the Ark Royal, and along the debris path there was an unmistakeable outline.
A Fairey Swordfish!
This is not just any Fairey Swordfish. This is one of the survivors of Bismark torpedo raids of May 1941. It is sitting at the bottom of the Mediterranean, certainly with all the fabric gone, but still sufficiently intact to give image enough for type recognition.
My mind is boggled at the find and I still find it hard to believe.
I simply cannot wait until someone figures out how to recover it. And if there is one, there might be more. Who knows? Perhaps the very plane that doomed the Bismark will one day grace the Imperial War Museum.
click for larger image
Medical researchers have condemned the new Human Tissues Bill as an impediment to teaching and research.
But scientists say the changes go too far and will make teaching and medical research extremely difficult.
There is no discrimination between whole organs and a collection of a few cells on a microscope slide, they say.
Cancer charities and the Wellcome Trust are calling on ministers to make changes to the Bill.
Doctors have to obtain written consent if they wish to use any form of human tissue removed from a person living or dead, even if they are checking for the prevalence of a virus in the general population. One can think of the consequences if tests could not have been carried out for AIDS, given the level of stigmatisation that accompanied the virus. There is a quandary since informed consent is surely necessary before the tissues of any individual are extracted, preserved and used for any purpose, even if it is for public health.
However, it is estimated that 3,000,000 samples and 100,000,000 blood samples will require written consent, proving another bureaucratic excess for the NHS. Public health is often used as an argument to override the concerns or refusal of an individual to provide any form of sample. No doubt there is an argument that rational individuals will understand the necessity of acting in concert when faced with an unknown disease or epidemic. However, this is often not the case.
Grappling with the issue of public health and a libertarian society, certain questions have presented themselves: Do individuals who refuse to cooperate with ventures sourced in civil society to track and curb the spread of any disease in a minarchy open themselves to claims of compensation since their actions could be viewed as endangering others? At such times, is the action of ‘opting out’ of a collective venture to track and curb an epidemic by any individual sufficient to trigger claims against that individual on the grounds that their actions placed others in danger?
Perry de Havilland has limited the notion of public health to “communicable diseases”, but even here, it is unclear if such matters require a coercive authority mandated to use the measures necessary to curb any disease. As it stands, the new Human Tissues Law will require written consent before any part of your body is taken and used for another purpose, even if it is in your own interest. Surely an advance on the contemporary thefts by state institutions in the name of ‘research’.
I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts
– Will Rogers
There is an interesting story in the Telegraph about a teenage Afghan arrested as a Taliban supporter and held in Guantanamo Bay. Although he was none too happy about being taken away from his parents, rather surprisingly he claims that he had a good time in the US military prison!
In a first interview with any of the three juveniles held by the US at Guantanamo Bay base, Mohammed said: “They gave me a good time in Cuba. They were very nice to me, giving me English lessons.” Mohammed, an unemployed Afghan farmer, found the surroundings in Cuba at first baffling. After he settled in, however, he was left to enjoy stimulating school work, good food and prayer.
What a funny old world.
MommaBear links to several recent articles on the increasingly revolutionary situation in Iran.
A mouthpiece for the ruling Mullahs has stated resigning members of government will be treated as criminals under Islamic law. With large numbers of popular leaders now out of government the next election looks to be a very weak and sad affair of limited public credibility. After the election? The deluge perhaps.
They have tied the steam relief valve shut. There is nowhere for dissent in Iran to go now. Pressure can only build until it explodes onto the streets of Tehran. The question is whether the Mullahs will begin ‘the Terror’ before or after the explosion.
Over at One Hand Clapping you can read about a new mobile phone technology that will simply knock you dead.
In the early 1860’s the majority of the Prussian parliament refused to accept new taxes (to finance higher military spending) without parliamentary control of the government.
If the liberals in the parliament had been libertarian they would have opposed the new taxes whether or not the government was subject to the control of parliament (the extra military spending was certainly not needed – Prussia was not being threatened with invasion by anyone), but at least they opposed the tax increase.
The Prussian chief minister Otto Von Bismark collected the new taxes in defiance of the Prussian parliament. The liberals made speeches, they conducted votes, they signed petitions – and Bismark ignored them. The Prussian minister understood that government rests on force (‘blood and iron’) not opinion. If the liberals could not defeat the government in battle their opinions were not relevant.
Why does this bit of old history put me in mind of modern Iran? Well in Iran there is a parliament whose votes are often ignored by the unelected ‘Supreme Leader’ and ‘Council of Guardians’. And now the Leader and Council are trying to stop many people (including sitting members of the institution) even standing for election to the parliament. → Continue reading: Why modern Iran reminds me of Prussia in the early 1860’s
This is almost enough to make voting a worthwhile exercise again:
Tony Martin – the farmer who was jailed for killing a burglar – may stand as an MP.
Mr Martin has been campaigning for a change in the law since being released from prison six months ago, where he after served three years of a five year sentence.
He told the Daily Mirror: “Everywhere I go people tell me how they are living in fear, but none of the political parties seem to be prepared to do anything about it.”
And I am not sure if Mr Martin will be able to do anything about it either but he should stand anyway. The joyous spectacle of the bien-pensant convulsing in a fit of bug-eyed, brain-melting horror as Tony Martin steps up to take his seat in the House of Commons would make the whole exercise worth it. A thousand times worth it.
Go for it, Tony.
UPDATE: Having offered my instinctive support, it has just occured to me that Tony Martin may not actually be allowed to stand for Parliament due to his criminal record. Pity. I get the feeling he would romp to victory.
I got a Valentine’s Card once. I cannot remember the exact year but I think it might have been around 1937.
Since then my doormat has been graced with a small mountain of bills, a cascade of unwanted mail-order catalogues and the occasional muddy footprint. But I harbour no grudges and, as the day of luuuurrve and romance fast approaches, let me take this brief opportunity to extend my warmest wishes to all those gaily courting couples of the world. May the aim of cupid’s arrow be straight and true and may it pierce the fluttering heart of paramours everywhere. For what is life but to love, as some philosopher once said. Or should have said.
Forgive the mawkishness but I have been driven to such sentimentalities as a reaction to the rather less enchanting message that is being broadcast from people who, purportedly, are rather more caring than I am:
A hard-hitting advertising campaign to warn young people about the dangers of unsafe sex has been unveiled by the Government.
The campaign, launched in the run-up to Valentine’s Day, features cartoon images of realistic looking Valentine’s cards, with powerful messages about the risks of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
One features a sunset scene of a couple on the beach with the poem: “Oh Valentine, since you came to me you’re always in my thoughts. I’ll never forget the night we met and you gave me genital warts.”
Another shows a pink teddy bear in obvious pain, with the message: “I love you so much it hurts… when I pee.”
Such a bunch of twinkle-eyed, slushy romantics, are they not?
Health Minister Melanie Johnson said it was “vital” to tackle this boom in sexually transmitted diseases and improve sexual health.
“This campaign is aimed at targeting those most at risk by using thought-provoking imagery and direct language.
“The Sex Lottery campaign is targeted specifically at sexually active 18 to 30-year-olds, and has already achieved significant behaviour change.’
At Christmas it’s the dangers of overeating, overdrinking and faulty electrical goods. In the summer it’s skin cancer, sunstroke and cornea-damage. Now, the season of romance invokes finger-wagging and tut-tutting about STD’s. I think what the Department of Dour Presbyterian School Ma’ams is trying to tell us is that life is a bitch, no good will come of it, pleasure is sin and we will all be jolly well sorry we ever started.
While the theological analogy is tempting, it is probably too deep. The real problem lies in there being far too many many state bureaucrats with far too much time on their hands and way too much of our money burning a hole in their pockets. But I do wonder if these people actually mean what they say? I mean, is all this sanctimonious hectoring just a way of bailing out the huge waves of cash that HM Treasury has flooded them with in recent years? Or do people like Melanie Johnson really see the world only in terms of the demons waiting to pounce with malice aforethought on the unsuspecting life-reveller? Are these apparent neuroses just convenient rubrics or is this, in fact, the true face of our political classes that we are seeing, genital-warts and all?
I would like to think that it is the former but, increasingly, I suspect the latter. I really do think that our entire ruling class is deep in the grip of some paralysing psychosis that has turned them into medieval peasants, muttering incantations and kissing toads to protect themselves from the Dark Faeries That Dwell In The Woods.
Generally speaking, the world is a dangerous and worrisome place for defeated and exhausted people.
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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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