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None of us are getting any younger. This truth, long recognised, has finally dawned on the Australian government, and the media is in panic mode about the cost of it all. No wonder. Australia has a socialised medicine and health system, so the costs could well rise to infinity. At least we will be able to read about it because one of the few medical procedures in Australia that are not regulated to death is laser eye surgery. But there are none that are as blind as those who will not see. November 25th, 2004 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I am sure that when many regulars here, readers and writers, read this, they will decide that finally and irrevocably, the country that grabbed itself an empire over which the sun never set, invented the steam engine, saw off Hitler, and used once upon a time to eat ball bearings for its breakfast, has finally gone so soft that nothing will save it:
But I do not think this is straightforward evidence of softness. I think that we just live in rather soft times. If the times harden, we would harden up with them pretty quick. The irony is that this apparently soft-as-slush BBC story actually harks back to a much harder time, when men were men and pigeons were pigeons. (Do you think Blackadder when you follow that previous link? I do.) Anyway, on with the BBC story:
… and many more gutsy beasts, protected, one suspects, by having only the dimmest idea of what they were actually engaged in, and of the risks they were taking. Nevertheless, these are arguably statues in a similar vein to this one, or even this one. If you want further evidence of the hardness that lurks just beneath the soft surface of human nature in soft old Britain just now, take a look at another piece of sculpture I spied this evening, on my travels along Oxford Street. November 24th, 2004 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
As an unashamed football (not soccer, dammit) fan, I must confess not to always having the highest regard for Sir Alex Ferguson, who will lead out his beloved Manchester United squad for his 1,000th match in charge as manager. He can be an irascible old fellow, and his carping about the decisions of referees is tiresome. One cannot, however, doubt his passion for the game or his record of success in winning a hatful of trophies, including the European Champions League cup in 1999, as well as his careful and often fatherly nurturing of a raft of wonderful young players like Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, and of course David Beckham. By the rapid hire-and-fire standards of modern football, Fergie’s longevity is a wonder to behold. He reigns above ManU with every bit as much pomp as that other great Scotsman to have managed United, Sir Matt Busby (the man who probably did more than any other mortal to create the great club that it is today). And Ferguson’s tenure has coincided with football’s rise to unparalleled commercial success, and whether one is bored senseless by sport or an addict like yours truly, one cannot doubt that Ferguson and Manchester United have played a huge part in making football the successful enterprise it is now. November 24th, 2004 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Austin Meyer, author of the X-Plane flight simulator, has posted a picture showing a mockup of a home computer from 1954. I particularly like the “easy to use Fortran interface”. But then I would… I started off as a Fortran hacker. I must admit thinking this is what the (one, only) home computer of 2004 would have looked like had it been a government operation as space flight has been. Ooops: I got taken in, as did Austin: Snopes had it. Found out minutes after hitting the publish button. We catch things fast here on the net! But it is a cute image and my final point does still stand, faked photo or not. November 24th, 2004 | 44 comments - (Comments are closed)
On the face of it, this is good news, of a householder standing up for his rights, and using reasonable force:
But of course, this event leaves the definition of ‘reasonable’ in the same old totally unreasonable state that it has long been in. If you are Ozzy Osbourne, and you take it into your head to interrupt a criminal in the course of his criminality using only your bare hands, and not actually hurting the criminal, and you merely chase him away, with his swag, then fine, the Police will shower you in praise. But if Ozzy had actually smacked the criminal with a chair leg or something, and had done it hard enough to ensure that the criminal would not be in any state to fight back, as would have been entirely reasonable and as would have been very much in the interests of everyone other than criminals, his legal position would now be far more awkward. Never mind that if Ozzy had done this, the criminal might have been caught, and might even – who knows? – have ended up being punished in some way. And Sharon Osbourne would have got to keep all her jewels. But no. Ozzy only managed to chase the criminal away, and the criminal gets to go on being a criminal. Well done Ozzy! Well, Ozzy did do quite well. At least he had a go, as the saying goes. But he could have done far better, and if he had, the Police would have squealed like outraged, upstaged pigs. November 23rd, 2004 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Further to this posting and previous postings involving Zimbabwe, the England cricket tour of Zimbabwe, etc., this story is the kind of reason why I am not that bothered about this apparently very stupid cricket tour that is now going ahead. No tour, and there would be that much less reportage of Zimbabwe and its disgusting ruler. What has happened is that about half the media have been banned from entering Zimbabwe, to write about the cricket! I suppose the fear is that they might wonder what all that shouting and screaming and people bashing is that goes on outside cricket grounds (and everywhere else – except in Safari parks apparently, see the comment on that previous posting) in Zimbabwe these days. All the same, the ICC, cricket’s global governing body, is making itself look ever more ridiculous:
Well, exactly. A normal government cannot be allowed to behave like this. The Mugabe regime, on the other hand, must obviously be spared the interfering attentions of inquisitive journalists. How else can this disgusting regime grapple unhindered with all of the many, many problems caused by its own disgustingness? November 23rd, 2004 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
The picture below has been making the rounds of the net aviation (and other) communities the last few days. The young Aussie lads chanced upon a motor race event whilst on coastal patrol. They went into a temporary hover all the better to communicate with numerous and luvly birds on the ground. Someone caught them in the act and the photo went up on a professional pilot’s site from whence it spread to other places. The lads seem to be in a bit of hot water over it, no doubt due to complaints from the PC (Pulchritudinously Challenged) sector.  November 23rd, 2004 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Instapundit thinks there is a connection between the dodgy cover-ups in US public life such as Rathergate and the Sandy Berger affair, as detailed here, and the basketbrawl and its public implications as detailed here. For good measure, he invites us to call him crazy. I do not think he is crazy, but he might be taking a short term view. As Jim Geraghty put it:
Well, yes. I would posit, though, that rich and powerful figures in society have always benefited from these sorts of shenanegans. There is nothing new there. What IS new is that thanks to the compressed news cycle and bloggers, whistleblowers and better education, is that people are much less willing to put up with it. Compared to the dodgy dealings of earlier times, Rathergate is small beer indeed. We are not talking Teapot Dome here. That is not to say that we should not worry about this level of dishonesty. Dodgy dealings by those with public responsibilities should never be tolerated. But it is a positive sign that people are increasingly unwilling to tolerate illegal behavior from what is laughingly known in some quarters as the Great and the Good. (Maybe one day people will worry about the actual laws that get passed. I remain an optimist.) Instapundit thinks there’s a connection between dodgy dealings and boys behaving badly, either playing or attending sport. I remain to be convinced. The actual fight in question seems to me to be a bit excessive, but hardly unprecedented. I have seen worse fights in Australian country football, and as for players and spectators interacting, well, after 25 years of watching cricket, I think I’ve seen it all before. The shock that US bloggers seem to be in over the affair does suggest that it is new to American sports lovers though. But as a sportslover with a more global perspective, I would say that the behavior of sports fans (and indeed players) is probably somewhat improved, if you take a long term and global view. But then, when it comes to the long term (longer then the next electoral cycle), I am a raging optimist. I think Professor Reynolds is wrong on this one. November 23rd, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Lt. Charlie William of the British Army survived a 3500 foot fall with minimal damage to his person after his parachute rigging tangled upon exit from the airplane during training over Kenya. He broke through a corrugated iron roof and gave some Kenyans a bit of a start. I have heard of dropping in for tea unexpectedly, but Charlie seems to have taken it a bit farther than most. It does not appear to have been reported whether the home owners supplied their guest with a hot cuppa as he awaited assistance. November 22nd, 2004 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
‘Consultancy’ is the middle class word for unemployment. November 22nd, 2004 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that we have long regarded the Ban on Foxhunting with Dogs as having very little to do with foxhunting. As David Carr has pointed out before, those who shout loudly that the move against hunting is ‘undemocratic’ are completely wrong: it is perfectly democratic. Welcome to the world in which there is no give and take of civil society… welcome to the world of total politics.
No kidding. That is what we have been pointing out here on Samizdata.net for quite some time and why we have treated commenters who shrugged and said “why get worked up about foxhunting?” with such derision. It was never about hunting but rather things that are far, far more fundamental. It is about those who would make all things subject to democratically sanctified politics (‘Rule by Activist’) seeking to crush those who see private property and society, rather than state, as what matters.
And Mr. Bradley is correct but for one thing: the battle in question is about the limits of political power and not just Labour’s political power. Until the supporter of the Countryside Alliance see that they are actually struggling against the idea of a total political state, they will not even be fighting the right war. It is not about who controls the political system but what the political system is permitted to do under anyone’s control. The United States has a system of separation of powers and constitutional governance which (at least in theory even though not in fact) places whole areas of civil society outside politics. Britain on the other hand has no such well defined system and the customary checks and balances have been all but swept away under the current regime. Britain’s ‘unwritten constitution’ has been shown to be a paper tiger. But those who look to the Tories to save them from the class warriors of the left are missing another fundamental truth. During their time in power, the Tory Party set the very foundations upon which Blair and Blunkett are building the apparatus for totally replacing social processes with political processes, a world in which nothing cannot be compelled by law if that is what ‘The People’ want: populist authoritarianism has been here for a while but now it no longer even feels it has to hide its true face behind a mask. Moreover it would take another blind man to look back on Michael Howard’s time as Home Secretary and see him as being less corrosive to civil liberties that the monstrous David Blunkett. Have you heard the outraged Tory opposition to the terrifying Civil Contingencies Act? Of course not, because the intellectual bankruptcy of the Tory party is now complete… for the most part they support it. If the so-called ‘Conservatives’ will not lift a finger to stop the destruction of the ancient underpinnings of British liberty, what exactly are they allegedly intending to ‘conserve’? The Tories are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem and the sooner the UKIP destroy them by making them permanently unelectable, the better, so that some sort of real opposition can fill the ideological vacuum. Those who were marching against banning foxhunting completely miss the issues at stake here. The issue is not and never has been foxhunting but rather the acceptable limits of politics. And you cannot resolve that issue via the political system in Britain. It is only once the people who oppose the ban on foxhunting and the people who oppose the Civil Contingencies Act and the people who oppose the introduction of ID cards and data pooling all realise that these are NOT separate issues but the same issue will effective opposition be possible. And I fear that opposition will, at least until the ‘facts on the ground’ can be established, have to be via civil disobedience and other ways to make sections of this country ungovernable by whatever means prove effective. The solution does not lie in ‘democracy’ but rather by enough people across the country asserting their right to free association and non-politically mediated social interaction by refusing to obey the entirely democratic laws which come out of Westminster. Peter Bradley is right and he has provided any who are paying attention with a moment of utter clarity: It is time to challenge his right to ‘rule’ by whatever means necessary. November 22nd, 2004 | 65 comments - (Comments are closed)
There was debate here about just how bad the situation is in Africa in general, just how corrupt African governments now are, and just how pointless and/or harmful it may now be to send them charitable aid, etc. But I take it that no one will claim that matters have improved very much, in particular, Zimbabwe during the last decade.
But do not worry. Some skilled workers are about to go to Zimbabwe, in the form of a visiting England cricket team. Which might explain why someone thinks it worthwhile to place adverts featuring this website, next to the Telegraph piece quoted from above. I cannot think of any other reason to want to visit this dreadful place.
Book your cheap holiday or business trip dates? That would be a real fun holiday. And business? What on earth business might that be? Nothing very civilised I should imagine. Selling cheap bus journeys out of the damn place, perhaps. What a horror story. Death to Mugabe. Seriously, the sooner that stubborn old bastard drops dead the better, from whatever causes God (in the insurance sense of that much overused word) chooses, the better. This will probably be the next good thing that happens to this wretched country, and if he is as stubborn about clinging on to life as he is in clinging on to his idiotically destructive policies and damn the consequences, then the people of Zimbabwe could be in for a long wait. I know that many who read this blog might feel that I ought to be angry about those cricketers, but honestly, I cannot see their visit making much difference one way or another. After all, nobody in a position actually to improve matters in Zimbabwe seems at all inclined actually to do that. In South Africa, for example, the big debate now seems to concern whether or not to be nasty to the millions of refugees from Zimbabwe, not about whether anything can or should be done to improve things in Zimbabwe itself. November 22nd, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
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