“The role of government is to provide good health care for our seniors. We made that commitment, interestingly enough, when Lyndon Baines Johnson was the President.”
|
|||||
|
noun. Spam blog. A blog created purely as a payload target for spam. The spam itself is delivered via trackbacks, comment spamming or e-mail and the ‘splog’ is where you end up if you click the spam link (which is something you will not do, of course) The view that genuine bloggers have of splogs is best summed up with the phrase “people who create splogs should die in an unpleasant manner and soon”. March 17th, 2006 | Comments are closed
 The government provides free guidelines and advice which allows business to assess the risk of a terrorist attack. The website, “Continuity Central“, released a publication today entitled “Protecting Against Terrorism” summarising guidelines for businesses. This was not a public relations exercise by our political masters but a common sense response to requests from those businesses that have thought about the possibility of a terrorist attack.
Yet, the majority of small businesses must be unaware that there are free guidelines of this nature. Has this government, renowned for its expertise in public relations, promoted a booklet that would save lives? Was this a press release that the mainstream media responsibly reported because they understood that smaller enterprises do not belong to organisations with the resources to monitor such subjects? The release of relevant publications is a vital opportunity to raise awareness of the preventive actions that organisations and individuals can take to mitigate a terrorist attack. This press release sunk without trace on a day when the Home Office launched a campaign for reducing forced marriages amongst immigrant groups, announced new funding for racial equality and community cohesion and issued new regulations on the work of the Criminal Records Bureau. All admirable goals for some I am sure but I would argue that they are of less importance than raising security awareness amongst small businesses and the self-employed You may rest assured that New Labour has its priorities right: the politically correct client bank must come first. March 16th, 2006 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have always found group names quite interesting, such as a ‘crash’ of rhinos, ‘school’ of fish, a ‘gaggle’ of geese, a ‘stupidity’ of politicians, a ‘conspiracy’ of lawyers, etc… but what is a collection of French students to be called? Perhaps an ‘unreasonableness‘? Or would it be a ‘perversity’? Or maybe a ‘delusion’ of French students? Three hundred thousand of them were protesting and/or rioting because of attempts to change the laws that make no business in their right mind want to hire them in the first place. This is because if they turn out to be indolent layabouts, a company is still not allowed to fire them. So, as unemployment approaches 10% in France (or quite a bit higher according to some), demonstrating that something is just a tad wrong with the ways things work in France, these clever chappies want to motivate employers to continue to not hire people. Outstanding. March 16th, 2006 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is the patriotic duty of all of us to skip political commercials. – Craig Newmark, founder of Craig’s List, speaking at SXSW March 16th, 2006 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tony Blair’s weak and rather feeble effort to give a tincture of independence to state schools – arguably none, in reality – was only pushed through in the House of Commons last night because of support from the Conservatives, as this BBC report and others have stated. Dozens of Labour MPs, outraged at the very idea of schools loosening any controls from the State, rebelled. The Labour Party, having kept its mouth tightly shut in some ways while Blair sought to pass himself off as a pale Tory, is getting increasingly stroppy. The Iraq war clearly has had something to do with it, but there seems to be a sort of natural life cycle with Prime Ministers. As the years go by, and enemies are made, MPs passed over for promotion, the groupings of malcontents increases. It seems rather odd that Blair should suffer such a blow from his backbenchers on what is in fact hardly a radical education bill. The irony of course is that Blair continues to be fixated by the career and achievements of Margaret Thatcher, a true radical in some ways with some significant achievements to her credit. Blair talks a good game on radicalism, as they say in sport, but delivery is often way short. His achievement, if we can call it that, has been a sustained and deep assault on the network of checks and balances that constrain State power, in particular, his determined assault on the English Common Law. My bet is that Gordon Brown will be Prime Minister in 12 months from now. Any takers? March 16th, 2006 | 69 comments - (Comments are closed)
Don’t ever become a pessimist… a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events. March 15th, 2006 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds has been out promoting his new book. In order to demonstrate how well connected to the world ordinary people now are, how much choice they have, and much information they have easy and inexpensive access to, he has repeatedly brought up the example of the bar he likes to work ” with 27 kinds of beer on tap, a nice patio and… a free wireless Internet hookup,” It sounds reasonably good. As it happens though, Jonathan Pearce and I went to Porto in Portugal last weekend in order to So what can I say? Samizdata 200 – Instapundit 27. We win.  For what it’s worth, in front of me I have a dry white port, a fruitier white port, a reserve, an unfiltered L.B.V, two tawnies, and a 21 year old colheita. (The colheita in particular was just divine). March 15th, 2006 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
I love this story:
I wonder if this works with the great white shark. March 15th, 2006 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have not the time to go into great details at the moment, but the 25th International Space Development Conference will take place in less than two months. If you are interested in the grand adventure, this conference is the place to be in the first week of May. The list keeps growing, but here is the speakers list we (the National Space Society (NSS) and the Planetary Society) have lined up so far. PS: I might try some live-blogging at the event if I get to spend any time outside of committee rooms! March 15th, 2006 | Comments are closed
There is a rally going to be held in Trafalgar Square between 2:00pm and 4:00pm on Saturday March 25th 2006, in support of freedom of expression. Be there and show your support! There is also going to be a similar rally in Berlin on the same day and hopefully others organised in various cities if a critical mass of interest can be attracted.  March 15th, 2006 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
Comments on Samizdata may be unavailable for a short while as we are in the process of changing systems. March 14th, 2006 | Comments are closed
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||