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 particularly like it when blogging is being done, or is about to be done, by people whom I know quite well. And my friend Helen Evans has just this very day started a blog about nursing, called the Nurses For Reform blog.
That said, the prose style so far is rather corporate and armour-plated for my taste. However, despite the rather baffling word “contestability” – which is presumably some kind of Blairite code-word, for something or other – I think it is reasonably clear what is intended by the following:
NFR rejects bland egalitarianism in favour of contestability. Above all else we believe that greater partnership with the private sector is to be actively welcomed and that this sector’s contributions are good news for patients and healthcare professionals alike.
That suggests to me something quite like free market medicine, and of course I am totally for that. This next bit is definitely about free market medicine:
NFR believes in fundamental change. It believes that only by putting patients and consumers interests first will healthcare improve. It is only when healthcare is opened up to real consumers and trusted brands that nurses will find themselves working in a sustainable environment and with the incentives, resources and encouragement to deliver a responsive, popular and truly high quality service.
This says stuff I agree with, but in the manner of a corporate mission statement, and I loath and detest nearly every corporate mission statement that I have ever encountered.
Wouldn’t it be fun one day to read one of these things starting with something like: “We believe only in superficial change. Fundamentally, things should stay pretty much as they are.” And how about someone just occasionally admitting that he aims to supply an “unresponsive, unpopular” product or service? Many splendid tradespersons do just that and are richly rewarded.
However, since this is a corporate mission statement, I really ought not to carp. And since this is medicine and nursing care in Britain that is being talked about, well, I admit it, I do believe in “fundamental change”. Nor can I reasonably object to the ambition that nurses should work, if at all possible, in a “sustainable environment”, nor to them delivering a “responsive, popular and truly high quality service”.
To be more serious, I have quite often heard Helen Evans say, in the plainest of English, that one of the many problems of Britain’s National Health Service is that its nurses do not now have a proper career path in front of them. As soon as they get really good at their job, they tend to leave. The NHS has lost many of what would now be its NCOs, so to speak, good and experienced senior nurses being to hospitals what good and experienced sergeants are to armies. And where have they all gone? To get married, or to the private sector.
When the postings at this new blog get more specific and personal, as I am sure many of them will, I will surely read them with interest and pleasure. There will be more links from here to there in the future, I promise you.
I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.
This is a quotation attributed to the Duke of Wellington, referring to the red-coated soldiers he led in the Peninsular campaign in the early 19th Century and later, in the Battle of Waterloo, in what is now Belgium. He would often remark in scathing terms about his own men while also praising their steadiness under fire and general courage.
I kind of feel the same way about a bunch of men – it seems to be male thing – called the New Atheists in this interesting article over at Wired magazine. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and others are no doubt fearless in fighting against what they see is wilful superstition. You want to admire and like what they are doing and in general, I do. I recall reading Dawkins’ book, the Selfish Gene many years ago and was greatly impressed. I felt the same way about Dennett’s books. And yet and yet… Dawkins is so dismissive of there being any value to religion whatsoever that you almost end up feeling rather sorry for religious people – at least the ones that are not fundamentalists. For all that I have problems with religion and un-reason, I cannot overlook the benign side of religion or the contributions that the Judeo-Christian tradition has played in the West, for instance. It is arguable, for example, that notions of individualism, free will and dignity of the person have been greatly driven by that tradition, as well as other schools of thought. But Dawkins will have none of it. He is just as harsh on moderates as he is on the fundamentalists. He thinks the state should ban parents from trying to pass their views to their children (quite how this would be enforced is not made clear in the Wired article). I am not sure if he is going to persuade any existing religious people out of their views although he might, by his sheer boldness, encourage a lot of secret atheists to “come out of the closet”.
Anyway, it is an interesting article and the associated comments, or at least most of them, are pretty good as these things go.
Lie and cheat. It is empty bureaucracy, and the people asking the questions do not care either:
[A]lthough I was born in Rawalpindi, in Pakistan, I used to say my ethnicity was Irish because I resented the question.
– Rear-Admiral Amjad Hussain, Royal Navy logistics chief, quoted in The Guardian
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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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