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I’m watching Robert Kilroy-Silk on Question Time, and I think he’s doing rather well.
Kilroy started out as a Labour MP, believe it or not. But he was never really convincing in the role. The others did not like him, and he sensed that he was not one of them, was my impression. Too keen on personal advancement, and not nearly keen enough on concealing it under a veneer of class solidarity. So he stopped doing that and switched to Kilroy, one of those early to mid-morning mini-amphitheatre televised bore-ins with Kilroy himself as the roving interlocutor.
Kilroy’s basic problem with Kilroy was that he seemed to regard everyone present except himself an idiot, a feeling which must have been hard to fight, given that everyone present except himself was at the very least behaving idiotically. (I speak as one who used to appear on this show myself from time to time, until I saw the pointlessness of my ways.) Kilroy tried to conceal his contempt for everyone under a layer of somewhat overdone good humour and what I presume he thought was charm, but what everyone else called smarm.
As his show moved away from semi-intelligent debate into the territory already occupied more entertainingly by Jerry Springer – my mother is a cross-dresser, I want to have a fight with my step-dad, my twin sister is a prostitute and I am a nun and I want to have a fight with her, etc. – Kilroy’s manner became ever more off-putting and false and desperate.
But Kilroy-Silk’s manner on Question Time was downright … appropriate. Gone was the layer of smarm. And out from under it came this really quite attractive and intelligent man. He used to be hated because he was appalling. Now he will be hated because he is not nearly as appalling as his enemies would like him to be.
Most of us are familiar with the Peter Principle, the one that says that people are promoted until they arrive with a thud at their level of incompetence, at which they then remain for ever. But in politics as in life generally, I think we sometimes observe the opposite process. Sometimes, people arrive at their level of competence, having just buggered about pointlessly for the previous two decades until they reached it. Kilroy-Silk strikes me as a fine example of a man who is now, as a Eurosceptic politician with the right, the duty, and the inclination to speak his mind, at last arriving at his level of competence.
It could turn out that by switching off Kilroy the talkshow host, and unleashing Kilroy-Silk the reborn politician, the BBC has made one of its most important contributions to the EUro-debate, in favour of the NO side.
Please understand that I am talking here about competence, rather than about the rights and wrongs of it all. I generally hate what politicians do, but my point is: some of them do it very well, while others mysteriously run out of steam, seem woefully miscast, and should have carried on with what they had previously been doing.
For the opposite tendency, a perfect example of the original Peter Principle rather than of the reverse version of it which I am here offering: Glenda Jackson. What a fine actress. And what a sad, drab failure as a politician.
After Thatcher glassed the unions, you would think they would have the manners to lie prostrate and bleeding amongst the spit and sawdust. Not a bit of it. Once their pet party returned to power under a business-friendly sneer, all they had to do was lie back and wait for pro-Europeans to pass the relevant regulation.
Lo and behold: the new Information and Consultation Regulations, where you, the employee, gain state mandated power to put forward a collective voice in how the business that employs you is run. You may not have put any money behind the business, but as a stakeholder, you should have your interests taken into account by the union that will represent you.
Tim Lang, partner at law firm George Green views this regulation as “a ticking time bomb”.
Initially, the new laws will only apply to firms with 150 or more employees. However, by 2007 the laws will extend to those with 100 employees and, by March 2008, the threshold will drop to 50.
Under the new rules, employ-ees will be able to request information and consultation arrangements from their employer with a petition from ten per cent of the workforce.
There would then be a period of time for negotiating a voluntary agreement, detailing exactly what information must be provided, when, to whom and what level of consultation is required. If nothing can be agreed then a default framework, set out in the legislation, will apply.
Since these works councils will provide a huge fillip to unionisation and wage demands, we can now see that the European Union, with Labour’s acquiescence, is rolling back Thatcher’s labour market reforms and jeopardising the potential growth of the British economy.
The costs for business will always be greater than the state estimates:
The Department of Trade and Industry estimates that for those firms with no pre-existing structure, who just implement the standard legislative process for informing and consulting, the total set-up costs per firm would be £4,000 for medium-sized firms and £6,300 for large firms.
But Mr Lang disagrees. He said: “The cost in management time of this new directive could be huge, with companies having to think through their processes and then actually provide the information. Time is already short for the first businesses affected to start the process of putting measures in place.”
Like all socialists, the Labour party wishes to return to a closed shop in politics and the workplace, gerrymandering our unwritten constitution and providing new institutions for the enemy class to take over the private sector.
What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response
Bernard Lewis
Oxford University Press, 2001
The Multiple Identities of the Middle East
Bernard Lewis
Schocken Books, 2001
In Goodbye to All That (pub. 1929), Robert Graves reports witnessing an encounter between Lawrence of Arabia and an American oil financier who had come over from the United States to ask him a single question: Did Middle-Eastern conditions justify him putting any money in South Arabian oil? Lawrence, without rising, simply answered: No. That was all the man wanted to know, and he left. At that time, the US produced almost three-quarters of the world’s oil, Iran less than three percent, while its presence in the Arabian pensinsula, if suspected, was unknown.
This exchange, some time in the nineteen twenties, though not alluded to by Bernard Lewis, is a reminder that in the absence of oil the whole region, from the Mediterranean to Iran, now detached from the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, might have been expected to slumber on as it had already done for centuries. Britain was burdened with the administration of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq and the Gulf States, but its only real interest was in safeguarding the route to India via the Suez Canal. It might feel responsible to do rather more for the region than merely keep the peace, a valuable enough favour to the inhabitants, but, in the way of active development, there would be little it could do. One of Lewis’s more surprising statements quotes a World Bank estimate that “the total exports of the Arab world other than fossil fuels amount to less than those of Finland, a country of five million inhabitants (p. 52).” Admittedly there is perhaps little need to export anything else, indicative of the lack of any incentive to do so which has stimulated countries without much in the way of natural resources, but this merely leads us by another route to the question posed by the author: why has the Arab world remained stagnant for something like a thousand years? → Continue reading: Bernard Lewis on what went wrong in the Middle East
If something sounds too good to be true then it is most likely untrue but if something sounds too bad to be true you can probably take it to the bank.
If there is anything axiomatic about that proposition then perhaps I should claim proprietory rights on it and call it ‘Carr’s Law’ or something. I am not sure how much use this law will prove to be on a practical day-to-day basis but it may oblige as a useful yardstick against which to measure my natural cynicism about opinion polls, surveys and related statistical exercises.
For example, take this one, published last month:
David Blunkett has pledged to push ahead with ID card legislation after an opinion poll said most people would be happy to carry one.
The MORI survey was commissioned by an IT consultancy which has worked on projects with the government.
It revealed 80% of those questioned backed a national ID card scheme, echoing findings from previous polls.
And published yesterday:
Most people would support closing a legal loophole that allows parents to smack their children, says a survey.
A total of 71% of people would favour such a ban, according to a survey commissioned by the Children are Unbeatable! Alliance.
And published today:
A majority of British adults favour a total ban on smoking in public places, a survey suggests.
A poll of more than 1,500 people by market analysts Mintel found 52% support for a ban, including two-thirds of non-smokers.
Despite my ingrained reluctance to pay these wretched surveys even a jot of heed, I do accept that a sufficient number of such polling exercises (if conducted scientifically and honestly) can, correctly identify a trend if not quite reveal great truths. → Continue reading: All those in favour say “aye”
There is some interesting new information about the 155mm Sarin shell on Blaster’s Blog:
Iraq never declared any binary 155mm artillery shells. In fact, they never claimed any filled with sarin at all in the UNSCOM Final report (Find on “Munitions declared by Iraq as remaining”). Not declared as existing at the end of the Gulf War, not having been destroyed in the Gulf War, not having been destroyed unilaterally. The only binary munitions claimed by the Iraqis were aerial bombs and missile warheads. Not in an artillery shell.
I was just thinking about this as I returned from breakfast. One of our commentariat pointed out the missing shells were of a smaller size and were of a type with a fairly short shelf life. Suddenly this single shell becomes even more troubling.
This is a very different story now. Is there a whole class of large binary munitions no one was even aware of?
Something rather remarkable has just happened. I am watching Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, and they have just had a serious discussion about how they really did not like the fact that the Government can tell exactly which internet sites you have just been visiting, and read all your emails, and send you to prison if you encrypt them and do not tell them the key, or whatever it is. Baddiel and Skinner never have serious discussions.
A bloke in a beard (of the trimmed sort rather than ZZ Top style) asked a question about this, and instead of him being laughed out of the studio, they found themselves discussing it quite seriously. Bearded bloke was allowed to add a further comment (about the emails). Baddiel in particular seemed quite upset.
Interesting.
We never saw this coming, did we?
The Government signalled yesterday that it was willing to breach the first of its “red line” safeguards on the European constitution by agreeing to cede Britain’s veto over sensitive areas of criminal justice.
The shift in policy raises fears that Brussels could acquire the power to interfere with the common law tradition of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and rules of evidence.
Whereas, until today, nobody had ever thought that possible.
I remember once defining “compromise” as you doing something I want, and in exchange me doing something else I want. Which makes me a bit like the EU. What a horrible thought. Eeeeuuuu!!!
The good news in space travel just keeps piling higher. An american group has launched a rocket to suborbital altitude.
An amateur unmanned rocket has been launched into space from the Nevada desert – the first time this has been achieved by a privately-built vehicle.
The Civilian Space eXploration Team’s 6.5m (21ft) GoFast rocket is understood to have exceeded an altitude of 100km.
The BBC’s statement may not be entirely accurate. I would have to look into the altitude reached by Space Services Inc. of America’s (SSIA) test rocket in the mid-eighties. It was launched from Matagordo Island on the Texas coast and impacted in the Caribbean.
The GoFast rocket of the Civilian Space eXploration Team rates higher marks in any case. SSIA used the upper stage from a surplus Minuteman Missile, if I remember correctly. In contrast, these folk did it from scratch.
The only other private ‘launch’ into space I am aware of was a BB sized bit of molten metal fired into solar orbit by a shaped charge final stage of a Tripoli Rocket Society rockoon in the sixties.
This is only an appetizer for the year 2004. The main course will be a manned suborbital flight by Scaled Composites. This is almost certain to happen within the next few months. I would not find it at all surprising to see SpaceShipOne ‘passenger’ flights before this year is out.
This is a very good year.
No question about the big story in London today. Some idiots seeking to draw attention to their cause (which – oh dear oh deary me – I seem to have quite forgotten although I was told) by chucking some contraceptives full of chalk dust at the Prime Minister during Prime Minister’s Questions.
If this dust had been scarily biological – anthrax or some such thing – then the subsequent behaviour of the assembled MPs was the exact opposite of what it should have been. Instead of remaining in situ to be cleansed by the cleansing squads, they immediately fled the chamber, which would have spread the contagion to the rest of us. There has to be a political metaphor there somewhere.
But fair play to them, our real ‘security system’ is not what we all do to prevent a disaster being disastrous; it is that once things have calmed down a bit, we chase after whoever did it and make life hell for them, and damn the expense. (Compare: 9/11.)
The usual protestations erupted today to the effect that “this must never be allowed to happen again”, thus proving that when stressed, MPs are just as foolish as Trailor Trash on the Jerry Springer show when facing similar mishaps, and just as keen on Total Safety as anybody else and just as doomed not to get it as everybody else. These things happen. The stupid people who did this will be chased down and made to wish that they had refrained. They will not be punished nearly as severely as they would have been if it really had been anthrax, but it will still be pretty frightening for them. If they did not see this coming, they are very stupid and deserve to be badly frightened anyway.
The idea that disasters are, on the whole, deterred rather than straightforwardly prevented, is, I think, a very fruitful one, with applications (again: 9/11) way beyond this one rather farcical episode.
None of which means that there will not now be a frighteningly expensive security panic centred on the House of Commons. New barriers will be erected. New badge systems to restrict access to the place will be devised, at a huge cost in muddle and frayed nerves as well as money. All kinds of restrictions to the manner in which members of the House of Lords invite people to the House of Commons (the problem today apparently) will be conjured up. Again: these things happen. One could no more stop such a process now than stop an earthquake from … quaking. But at the end of it, the world will still be a place in which malevolent or merely mischievous and unimaginative people (today’s culprits) will be able to create havoc if they are of a mind to. They will just have to find a slightly different way to do it.
Despite the best efforts of the Negatroid Hordes to convince us otherwise, much in Iraq is going very well.
DEMOCRACY TAKES ROOT: Democracy is spreading – from the ground up, as it should: “In the province of Dhi Qar, about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad and a backwater even by Iraq’s standards, residents voting as families will have elected city councils in 16 of the 20 biggest cities by next month.”
Read the whole article and then ask yourself where the journalists have been. No, not just their heads. We know where those are.
The May 1 issue of New Scientist contains an item ‘Why our fears about fat are misplaced’ written by Paul Campos, a Professor of Law from the University of Colorado. We have often stated our belief fat is the new job frontier for government bureaucracy and Professor Campos seems to agree with us. He states unequivocally that no research directly links fat to shorter lifespans. Sedentery lifestyles and other factors, yes. Fat alone? No. In his own words:
Ultimately the current panic over increasing body mass has little to do with science, and everything to do with cultural and political factors that distort scientific enquiry. Among those factors are greed (consensus panels put together by organizations such as WHO that have declared obesity a major health crisis are often made up entirely of doctors who run diet clinics), and cultural anxieties about social overconsumption in general.
He notes that in one recent study:
It added up to just one extra death per 10,000 “overweight” women per year. The authors still treated the findings as strong evidence of a causal relationship between weight and cancer
Professor Campos also has a book on the subject, The Obesity Myth.
The Government is quick to latch on to polls that seem to support its position. Let’s see how they like this one:
A recent poll by independent research group yougov shows that 61% of people support ID Cards in principle, way down from the previously claimed 80%. Almost half objected to the proposals in the draft Bill to force innocent citizens to keep the Government informed of their address. Other measures in the draft Bill such as being fined for not telling the Government of a lost card were fiercely opposed.
It seems that the more the British people learn about Big Blunkett’s plans the angrier they get.
The poll found opposition to compulsory ID Cards was so strong that almost five million British citizens are prepared to join protest marches. In addition, a massive three million people would be prepared to take part in civil disobedience in order to scupper the oppressive plans.
Opposition was particular strong amongst those aged under thirty where 34% were “strongly opposed” to the plans.
Commenting on the results Simon Davies of Privacy International said: “What this survey suggests is that the government is staring down the barrel of another Poll Tax revolt, but on a larger scale.”
Full story at ePolitix.com.
Detailed poll results (pdf format) at: Privacy International
PS: If you’re in London, don’t forget the public meeting this afternoon.
Cross-posted from uk-id-cards.blogcity.com
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