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Well, miracles do happen. For a while, I was labouring (scuse pun) under the view that no British Conservative MP would ever set foot (or fingers) in the blogosphere. I was wrong. The Conservative MP for Henley and all-round media superstar, Boris Johnson, now has a blog. I only hope he has some inkling of what he has let himself in for. [My thanks to Peter Cuthbertson for the link.]
September 21st, 2004 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
 When capital punishment was abolished in Britain in the 1960’s, the resulting public disquiet was mollified by assurances that convicted murderers would spend the rest of their lives in prison. That assurance proved worthless. Over subsequent years, and by gradual degree, the span of ‘life sentences’ was whittled down to the point where a convicted murderer is now confined, on average, for between 10-12 years. Apparently, even that is now far too draconian:
The caveat of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ is a promise which will prove to be as valueless as the last one. Step-by-step and case-by-case, the defintion of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ will be widened to the point where convicted killers are routinely sentenced to spend a few hours exploring their inner child with a Court-appointed Outreach Counsellor. Towards the end of the 19th Century the British State made a contract with its citizens the material terms of which required the individual citizen to surrender up their right to self-defence in return for the protection of the state which, by its agents, would both defend the citizen from harm and pursue and prosecute those who did (or attempted to do) the harm. Gradually, but inexorably, the state has walked away from its side of that bargain. However, this would be no bad thing were the citizen likewise released from his or her obligations. If the entire contract was simply put in the shredder, it would, at least, leave us free to make our own arrangements for our self-defence and security. But this is not so. The citizen’s promises to relinquish the right and means of self-defence remain not only extant but zealoulsy enforced by the state which has decided that it does, indeed, take only one to tango. The poor, willing, plodding, dutifully contracting citizen has now been placed in the worst possible situation: forbidden from defending their own life and limb and unable to call on anyone else to do so for them. The perfect scenario for the perfectly predatory society. September 20th, 2004 | 50 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is not a re-run of the 1930’s but surely I am not the only person who can hear the thin bat-squeak of warning?
National Socialists+Communists+Germany = Hackles rising. September 20th, 2004 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
The No2ID launch was held in the basement bar of The Corner Store in Covent Garden, a spacious restaurant/pub catering for the tourist trade. The attendance was good, with more and more interested parties walking in as the clock crept past midday until the small room was overflowing. The two speakers were Neil Gerrard, Labour MP for Wolverhampton, and Debbie Chay, the Chair of Charter88, representing the civil liberties movement, now repackaged as civil libertarianism, to distinguish itself from the Real Thing. Both provided telling anecdotes on the idiocies and dangers that an ID system would represent. Nevertheless, there was a telling gap in their analysis. Both were unable to provide a convincing story as to why the government was introducing this measure. Without understanding the motives behind the development of the ID scheme, it will prove far more difficult to halt or reverse. I also had the pleasure of meeting Guy Herbert, a name not so unfamiliar here. His own fear was that the ID scheme will depend upon the establishment of databases that will require a far greater intrusion into the private lives of citizens if the state is to monitor them effectively. My conclusions on the meeting were hopeful and fearful. As with any new campaigning organisation, there is a lot of work to be done in order to achieve the aim of defending civil liberties in the UK. Mark Littlewood, their National Coordinator, quipped that there were few organisations which could boast the Libertarian Alliance and Globalise Resistance as supporting organisations. Yet, as I talked with a couple of campaigners from the Left, they proved unresponsive to my thesis that they had to attract the middle classes: people who read the Daily Mail or supported the Countryside Alliance, if they wished to succeed. Since most of the activists were Left rather than Right in orientation, this may skew the activities and demands of No2ID. Secondly, the lack of analysis may prove a boon for libertarians. Neil Gerrard asked “why anyone would wish to introduce ID cards?”. The answer is complex: strategies to control the individual by the state, which has an increasing need to obtain information (once deemed private) in order to further this end. Boondoggles such as the evil machinations of private capitalists who could make vast profits from any contracts awarded by government should remain a sideshow. They will not convince people fearful of a terrorist bomb. Libertarianism provides the strongest resource for crafting a message that can appeal to all of those affected: from men with the wrong colour of skin who will be stopped even more often and asked for some form of ID to the yound, single professional who never encounters the state, until this drops through their letterbox. However, if there is a bomb in the United Kingdom on the scale of Madrid or the WTC, all bets are off. The government will argue that a terrorist atrocity requires the development of the surveillance state, backed up by authoritarian laws. Crossposted to White Rose September 19th, 2004 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
The No2ID launch was held in the basement bar of The Corner Store in Covent Garden, a spacious restaurant/pub catering for the tourist trade. The attendance was good, with more and more interested parties walking in as the clock crept past midday until the small room was overflowing. The two speakers were Neil Gerrard, Labour MP for Wolverhampton, and Debbie Chay, the Chair of Charter88, representing the civil liberties movement, now repackaged as civil libertarianism, to distinguish itself from the Real Thing. Both provided telling anecdotes on the idiocies and dangers that an ID system would represent. Nevertheless, there was a telling gap in their analysis. Both were unable to provide a convincing story as to why the government was introducing this measure. Without understanding the motives behind the development of the ID scheme, it will prove far more difficult to halt or reverse. I also had the pleasure of meeting Guy Herbert, a name not so unfamiliar here. His own fear was that the ID scheme will depend upon the establishment of databases that will require a far greater intrusion into the private lives of citizens if the state is to monitor them effectively. My conclusions on the meeting were hopeful and fearful. As with any new campaigning organisation, there is a lot of work to be done in order to achieve the aim of defending civil liberties in the UK. Mark Littlewood, their National Coordinator, quipped that there were few organisations which could boast the Libertarian Alliance and Globalise Resistance as supporting organisations. Yet, as I talked with a couple of campaigners from the Left, they proved unresponsive to my thesis that they had to attract the middle classes: people who read the Daily Mail or supported the Countryside Alliance, if they wished to succeed. Since most of the activists were Left rather than Right in orientation, this may skew the activities and demands of No2ID. Secondly, the lack of analysis may prove a boon for libertarians. Neil Gerrard asked “why anyone would wish to introduce ID cards?”. The answer is complex: strategies to control the individual by the state, which has an increasing need to obtain information (once deemed private) in order to further this end. Boondoggles such as the evil machinations of private capitalists who could make vast profits from any contracts awarded by government should remain a sideshow. They will not convince people fearful of a terrorist bomb. Libertarianism provides the strongest resource for crafting a message that can appeal to all of those affected: from men with the wrong colour of skin who will be stopped even more often and asked for some form of ID to the yound, single professional who never encounters the state, until this drops through their letterbox. However, if there is a bomb in the United Kingdom on the scale of Madrid or the WTC, all bets are off. The government will argue that a terrorist atrocity requires the development of the surveillance state, backed up by authoritarian laws. Crossposted to Samizdata September 19th, 2004 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
An acquaintance sent me a link to an article about the future of Europe and asked me for my opinions in response. As someone with a reputation for having an opinion (usually a fairly inflammatory one) about everything, I find myself untypically, and perhaps rather annoyingly, equivocal. But this is entirely due to the fact that I am unsure whether or not this kind of thing can or should be taken seriously:
I have heard such sweeping assessments before, courtesy (mostly) of some of the more intemperate conservative blogs and websites. But is there any substance to the claim? On the face of it, it appears both alarmist and far-fetched. Just taking the EU countries alone, I believe that there are, at most, some 20 million Muslim people out of a total population in the region of 470 million. Less than 5%. But, let us suppose that some profound demographic shifts over the next few decades result in Muslims outnumbering non-Muslims. Does it automatically follow that Europe will then be ‘Islamic’? And, if so, what type of Islamic? Are we talking about the arid, monochromatic, repressive Saudi ‘Wahabbi’ version or the more secular and easy-going Turkish variety? Or could it be some newly-manifest and unique ‘European’ version of Islam? Also, and given much of Europe’s descent into post-modernist torpor, would any of these scenarios (assuming they came to pass) necessarily be a bad thing? So many questions with no answers. Or no satisfactory answers at any rate. My own inclination is to regard the article with a high degree of skepticism. Human affairs are sufficiently fluid to make predictions about the next week seem foolhardy, let alone the next century. However, it is worth bearing in mind that North Africa (the Maghreb) was once as European as France or Italy is now and that fully two-thirds of what was once the Roman Empire is now a part of the Islamic world. But the past is not necessarily a guide to the future, so that just leaves me back where I started. In short, I just do not know and I am hesitant to venture any sort of opinion more definite than that. September 19th, 2004 | 74 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the more shameful aspects of the British civil service is the contempt and indifference that it often shows towards former servicemen and women, often viewing their demands as an anachronistic embarrassment. This partially explains the lack of action given the foreseeable plight that over one thousand Commonwealth veterans now face in Zimbabwe. This article in the Sunday Telegraph detailed the sad plight of veterans whose savings have been wiped out by Mugabe’s hyperinflation, whose lands have been confiscated by the war veterans and whose very lives are subjected to intimidation by ZANU-PF’S thugs. Their cause has been taken up by Col. Brian Nicholson of the Royal Commonwealth Ex-Services League, who has observed the impoverishment of the middle classes under the Mugabe regime.
Some may argue that many of the veterans were supporters of Ian Smith’s regime and UDI in the 1960s. As such, they deserve no further support or succour from HMG. These arguments have no bearing on the current vulnerability of this group who are now being targeted because of their origins.
September 19th, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Russians do not have an equivalent of political correctness. Russian politicians don’t get brownie points for competitive empathy. There is no inclination to take a therapeutic view of cultural conflict. September 19th, 2004 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
For years, a certain type of person wrote letters to national newspapers and was frustrated that none would be published. Letter Editors would refer to their submissions as ‘nutter letters’, pinning some to the office noticeboard for the amusement of their colleagues. Now these letter writers have moved into the age of the blogosphere. They are blogroaches now, but not ordinary ones. They are a type of superbug – the taxpayer-funded blogroach. They have nothing to do all day, except to collect jobseeker’s allowance or, more likely, incapacity benefit (which the government encourages them onto to massage the unemployment figures). Not having got out much recently, they have lost many of their social skills, and seem less able to interact with others with courtesy and respect. For this reason alone, workfare has a lot going for it. In having nothing to do all day, they inhabit other people’s blogs writing tediously long essays which tangentially refer to a blog’s point. They write 500 to 1000 words each time, and often get shirty if a proper response is not made by the blog’s author. Fortunately, Samizdata combines big readership with a high level of reader participation, meaning that its writers can sit back and let Paul Coulam beat up such annoying people. These blogroaches do not understand how to make their points graciously, normally regarding the blogs they infest as evil, and depositing their words of ‘wisdom’ on each and every article. The taxpayer-funded blogroach assumes that everyone has as much time as they do for blogging, and should take their views seriously, and publish proper responses to them – or retract what they have said. In reality, bloggers on popular blogs tend to have real jobs and thus a fraction of the time to write for a blog. Spending hours responding to unemployed blogroaches seems pretty tiresome. Some blogs solve this problem by just not allowing comments. Others delete blogroaches on sight. But the taxpayer-funded blogroach considers this to be restricting his right to free speech. Newspapers were wrong not to publish his letters and so are blogs. Apparently.  September 19th, 2004 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
I hardly know where to begin on this one (from Fox News).
This man thinks the Commander-in-chief should formulate war strategies according to what it says on CNN, and he is standing for president of the United States? With all due respect to the Democratic candidate, has he never heard of military intelligence? Does he even know what the blogosphere is? Is he talking about the same universe that the rest of us are talking about? Damn right, we are talking about different wars. This is the real one. And it’s not available in any newspapers. September 19th, 2004 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Mughal Empire The Great Moghuls The New Cambridge History of India is a massive project still in progress, stretching from Mughal times to the present – 30 volumes in all. From the General Editor’s Preface it is not at all clear what is to be done with pre-Mughal India. The Mughals and their Contemporaries is Division I of Four similar Divisions and The Mughal Empire is just one volume (here in pb), of the 9 of which Division I consists. The Mughal line (is “Mughal” the form which is now currently correct, rather than “Moghul”?) – Babur (1526-1530), Humayun (1530-1556), Akbar (1556-1606), Jahangir (1606-1627), Shah Jahan (1627-1658), Aurungzeb (1658-1707) – was from first to last aggressively expansionist, with large numbers of men permanently under arms, on which most of its income was spent. The conquered lands were fertile and well-populated and their exploitation well organized to be profitable. The economy was a monetary one, taxes paid in coin stimulating an agricultural surplus to pay them with, with a net flow of gold and silver from trade with the north and increasingly by sea with the west. Although paper as a essential bureaucratic adjunct had been in use as far back as the 11th century, printing seems to have made no appeal to the Mughals, except possibly to Akbar who, unfortunately, was illiterate, the only Emperor who was. The foundation of this centralised economy, which Richards analyses in considerable depth, was undoubtedly laid by Akbar, the most interesting of the Mughals and the one most open to innovations and ideas. To a large extent, almost all of India had already been penetrated by Muslims; in the previous century the Sultanate of Delhi had, for a few decades, ruled almost the whole subcontinent before it disintegrated, in the manner Indian empires always seemed to do. Thus when the Mughals arrived, most of Northern India was still ruled by Muslims, everywhere in a minority and increasingly so further and further south. Babur, in fact, established himself in northern India, by defeating the Sultan of Delhi at Panipat. → Continue reading: The Mughals – 200 Years of Indian History September 19th, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
“What they have done is despicable and we will not allow it to rest – the countryside will become a no-go area for Labour ministers.” Countryside Alliance spokesman Tim Bonner following the decision of Cabinet Minister Alun Michael to pull out of an appearance in rural Lancashire over fears for his safety. September 19th, 2004 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
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