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.
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On the same day that the news widely features the very boring (if believable and justified) complaint from British shopkeepers that fixed-penalty notices are not sufficient to deter common shoplifting, comes this illustration that stealing from shops need not be mundane, but that it does not pay to be different:
A lab technician who dressed as a female elf to steal lingerie at knifepoint was jailed for two years today.
Robert Boyd, 45, donned a blonde Harpo Marx wig, glasses and a beanie hat to hold up a female staff member at a lingerie store in Belfast.
He claimed to have been involved in a futuristic fantasy role-playing game at the time of the robbery in December 2005.
Now I party with petrochemicals like it’s 1999!
– Glenn Reynolds, taking his environmental responsibilities seriously.
Two little bits of green craziness from yesterday’s Ethical Living section of the Guardian. Interesting that it is no longer Environment Guardian, which I think is a hint that greenery is more a system of morals than a mode of scientific policy formation.
First, can’t add. Bibi van der Zee addresses a reader’s ethical dilemma:
Well, yes, cotton hankies, obviously. It’s not like disposable nappies versus reusables, where the disposable bunch can defend themselves on the grounds of the powere used to launder reusables. Because, really, how much electricity does it take to wash a handkerchief?
If Ms van der Zee could take some time off from expostulation – really – to think, she might spot that if you use a machine rather than bashing it on rocks at the riverside, laundering a piece of cloth takes pretty much the same amount of energy until it is too big to get in the machine, and the likelihood is greater that a handkerchief gets more energy (water, detergent…) used on it than strictly necessary than for any other item you might launder, precisely because it is smaller.
Second, won’t add. Caroline Lucas MEP answers the question, “Do you know your carbon footprint?”
Yes. It’s about seven tonnes of carbon a year, at least three times the global average but a little below the UK mean. That doesn’t include the essential travel in my work as an MEP – or the other carbon costs associated with running busy offices in Brussels and London. Measuring one’s carbon footprint is difficult, because differing systems calculate it differently. Mine includes an estimate for the carbon dioxide embedded in the clothes I wear, the food I eat and the goods I buy, for which I am responsible. So policy on reducing emissions can be based on actual or worst case figures, rather than the wishful thinking engendered by those who consider only travel and household fuel.
… but cosily ignoring the wishful thinking involved in excluding from consideration that MEPs spend more time on jets than many people who own one.
Oh Caroline! (She was a friend of mine, though I have not seen her for years.) What was wrong with saying the European government is insanely wasteful and you are trying to reduce that at the same time as contributing? Frightened of losing the moral high ground? Or such a believer in the value of more “essential” government that you exempt it from a calculation that purports to weigh every other human activity?
Those greens who favour carbon allowances tracked and enforced by government – very many of them – usually fall into the won’t add category. I have yet to see any of them attempt to quantify, or even acknowledge the existence of, the “carbon footprint” of the fabs and server farms, the bureaucrats and analysts, the data infrastructure and policing, needed to monitor and control everyone else’s lifestyle. Your personal carbon is a sooty sin consumed of private desire. That expended by the good state managing you is essential, virtuous, too cheap to meter. The divine Ms Lucas has internalised that distinction, it seems.
Australian students have been force-fed a diet of a certain version of Australian history, the ‘black-armband’ school of Australian history, which paints the entire colonial period of Australian history as a moral disaster. Now in evidence before the Australian Senate, history teachers have admitted that this is provoking resistance from students, who feel pride in their country.
HIGH school students resent being made to feel guilty during their study of Australia’s indigenous past and dislike studying national history in general.
The History Teachers Association called yesterday for a rethink of the type of Australian history being taught in schools and the way in which it is taught.
History Teachers Association of NSW executive officer Louise Zarmati said her experience teaching in western Sydney was that students were resistant to learning about Australian politics and, in particular, indigenous history.
“This is a somewhat delicate subject but they don’t like the indigenous part of Australian history,” she told a hearing of the Senate inquiry into the academic standards of school education in Sydney yesterday.
“The feedback I get is they’re not prepared to wear the guilt. They find it’s something that’s too personal, too much of a personal confrontation for them.
Since the students are not responsible for decisions made in the late 18th and early 19th century they are quite right to reject the ‘guilt’ being pushed on them by teachers. And it is nice to see that attempts by education authorities to politicise the classroom are rebounding on them.
I would like to suggest that Jonathan’s “Missing the point over grammar schools” below, itself misses the point. I am as in favour of grammar schools as anyone. But I do not think Cameron’s decision is any more than another piece of political pragmatism (read my comment on Jonathan’s piece for the rationale.)
I agree the new Tory policy does nothing significant for education. But I suspect Jonathan’s policy prescription – compromise vis-a-vis properly voluntary schooling it may be, is doomed. Introducing vouchers now would be worthless and the Tories are sensible, therefore, not to tie themselves to that. Not least they would risk discrediting vouchers: vouchers could be a move in the right direction, but not yet.
This is why. Here is a sensible lefty, Jenni Russell, reporting in the Guardian’s bloggish Comment is Free:
[A] father with an 18 year-old daughter at one of London’s famous public schools is shocked by her fear of anything beyond her narrow syllabus. She pleads with him not to tell her anything he knows about history or classics or literature, because she understands by now that knowing anything beyond the points on the examiners’ mark schemes will jeopardise her chances of getting top grades. She has learned that education is not about discovery, but the dutiful repetition of precisely what you have been told.
However good the school, however motivated the pupil, there is no choice to be had. There is a chemin-de-fer, directions predetermined, signals to be passed at the prescribed speed. No entry to university at 16, Mr Brown. No ignoring unutterably tedious and repetitious schoolwork and passing the exams at the end on the basis of your own reading. Step off the lockstep elevator once, and you are out for ever. (Mr Fry, the University regrets that we require a clean Criminal Records Bureau certificate.)
All Britain’s education is under the supervision of a suffocating bureaucracy, that serves itself and its conception of proper development. There is small choice in rotten apples; the sadly pocked sharecrop goes to uniform damp barrells.
Who is to blame? The conservative defenders of both grammar schools and ‘family values’, that is who; and the utilitarian industrialists who now complain workers can’t read or count. It was they who sought to save the population from indoctrination by radical Local Education Authorities, so delivered the entire population into the hands of pseudo-progressive educationalists by creating the National Curriculum; they who worried that universities could not be trusted to set sufficiently ‘practical’ exams, and did the same with syllabuses.
My modest proposal for English education:
Scrap the National Curriculum. Do not replace it. Scrap league tables and DoE “Key stage” testing. Do not replace them. Scrap rules on school admissions and allow schools to exclude or expel pupils as they choose. Scrap the QCA. Do not replace it. Scrap the Teacher Registration Regulations. Do not replace them. Scrap the office of the Access Regulator. Do not replace him. Wait five years, continuing to run and fund schools otherwise the same, which means a mix of Local Authority, central government, voluntary aided, and private schools. Only then, when people have got used to making their own decisions again, consider vouchers.
It seemed to me that on one side you had representatives of a fanatical cult trying to foist its views on the rest of the world and on the other… the Church of Scientology. Truly, they deserve one another.
– Patrick Crozier
I am not an American (I am British – also watch out for my poor spelling), but I have watched the Republican debate, and the interviews after the debate, on Fox News and my impressions are as follows:
On government spending Congressman Tancredo was impressive. He made the point about most Federal government spending being unconstitutional (which I expected Congressman Ron Paul to make, and he did not) and he made the point that various candidates were now saying they were hostile to expanding government spending but that they did not join him in voting against it when they had the chance (another point I expected Congressman Ron Paul to make – and I do not remember him making it).
On detailed military and security knowledge Congressman Duncan Hunter was impressive (for example in explaining what the present military-political tactics in Iraq were), the other candidates tended to talk in general terms and their grasp of some facts was uncertain. For example, Senator John McCain stated (and stated again in the post debate interview) that the division in Congress on ‘waterboarding’ (in interrogation) was between people who had served in the military (who he said were against the practice) and people who had not.
Whatever one thinks of “waterboarding”, the fact was that Congressman Hunter was sitting only a few feet from Senator McCain and had already stated that he had served in the military (Vietnam) and that his son was serving in Iraq.
On illegal immigration Congressman Hunter was at least as specific as Congressman Tancredo (who has made illegal immigration one of main issues). Libertarian minded people are normally (although not always) free migration people – but if you are interested in things like border control Congressman Hunter seemed to know at least as much about it as Congressman Tancredo did.
On abortion all the candidates, bar one, wished it to be unlawful. The one who dissented was (of course) former Mayor R.G. who stated not simply that abortion was a State matter (which would make him anti Roe V Wade without making him give a position on abortion itself), but openly stated that he wished to keep abortion legal (i.e. if he was running for State, rather than Federal, office that would be his position) – although he did state how much he hated abortion and how he wished to reduce the number of abortions (and claimed that his policy on such things as adoption had done this in New York City).
R.G. also replied to Congressman Ron Paul’s claim that American “bombing of Iraq whilst it was under sanctions” (and other interventions in the Middle East) provoked 9/11. The former Mayor of New York did not go into a detailed examination of Congressman Paul’s claims (as he was speaking without permission, the moderators would not have allowed him to speak long), he simply stated (in a quiet but firm way) that blaming the United States for 9/11 was ridiculous and called upon Congressman Paul to retract his comments (which Congressman Paul refused to do) – this reply got a vast positive response from the audience. The audience had been warned before the debate not to applaud – but Congressman Paul’s words did rather change the situation, making a reply and audience response not something that could really be prevented. Later in the debate Congressman Tancredo stated that he did want to be associated with his “dear friend’s [Ron Paul’s] remarks” which ignored the religious motivation of America’s enemies – i.e. their interpretation of Islam which holds that the main infidel power should be defeated regardless of what policy it follows (other than submission to Islam).
In the post debate interview, on being asked about Saddam Hussain gassing the Kurds, Congressman Paul said “we gave them the gas” (untrue). It did put me in mind of the late Murry Rothbard, with his habit of repeating whatever the latest enemy propaganda about the United States government and military happened to be. It should remind people (such as myself) how rant on about how bad the left are, that not all of the blame America crowd are on the left. And I write all this as someone who opposed the judgement to go into Iraq.
Mitt Romney (former Governor of Mass) was talked of a lot before the debate, but I thought his performance was terrible. He stated that he was “for Second Amendment Rights” but he also stated that he was “for the assault weapons ban”. He stated that he was in favour of getting government spending under control (as all the candidates did – for example R.G. was very strong on this) but also stated that it was a government responsibilty that everyone had health cover, and stated how much he supported “No Child Left Behind” (the extra Federal government funding and regulations that President Bush and Senator Kennedy introduced).
However, after the debate the “text vote” had former Governor Romney comming in second (after Ron Paul) as the winner of the debate – indeed he overtook Congressman Paul in the text voting by the end of the post debate show.
As regards former Governor Romney – those “text voters” must have been watching a different debate to me. Unless his campaign people were doing something.
I know well that the were other people in the debate. The former Governors of Arkansas, Wisconsin and Virginia. But they did not make much of an impression on me – although the former Governor of Arkansas got a laugh from the audience with a joke about former Senator John Edwards. Governor Huckabee also defended his choice to greatly increase road building and education spending in the State of Arkansas. Former Governor Thompson of Wisconsin made a point about how many times he had used the veto (more than all the other candidates of both parties put together he claimed). And former Governor of Virginia Gilmour made the point that he had reached out to racial minorities whilst Governor and also whilst Chairman of the Republican party.
“Well who would you vote for”.
Perhaps it is just as well that I do not have a vote – as I am unsure.
A lot of people are getting hot under the collar, and with some reason, about the decision by David Cameron to pour scorn on grammar schools. Grammars, since the 1944 Education Act, have selected pupils by a rigorous examination at the age of 11 – hence it is known as the Eleven-Plus exam, and an often make-or-break test in a person’s life. In the late 60s, the-then Labour government began a move to scrap grammars and replace them with so-called comprehensive schools, adopting a fiercely egalitarian policy. The collapse of grammars accelerated, ironically, when Margaret Thatcher was an education minister in the government led by Edward Heath. There are now only a few grammars left.
Cameron dislikes grammars, he claims, because they do nothing to advance the interests of bright, working class kids. He may have half a point in that for many people, the 11-plus can be an arbitrary point to decide a pupil’s future. Unfortunately for Cameron, however, his stated hostility to grammars only reinforces the image of him being an upper class toff who is determined to kick the ladder of upward mobility away from the unwashed proles underneath (his recent daft idea of hammering cheap flights with tax conveyed much the same patronising, bugger-the-plebs message).
But the Tories, in wrestling with education policy, are missing the point, as they often do. The fundamental problem is that education between the age of 5 to 18 is compulsory, a fact that ignores the fact that many youngsters are bored by school much earlier and should be allowed to work and if need be, pick up their education at a later date (it amazes me that some people find this idea so incredible). The Tories are also ignoring the need to focus on choice. Rather than schools selecting pupils, by exam or some other criteria, we need a genuine and broad market for education, in which parents and their children choose the school instead. I have my reservations about vouchers – they can give the state a potential lever over private schools – but a radical boost to parental/pupil choice of school is a reform that urgently needs to be put in place.
David Cameron: what is the point of this man?
By some strange para-constitutional principle, it is now assumed that the deputy leader of the Labour Party will be Deputy Prime Minister. That itself is not a huge prize, being a post with no constitutional status in the UK, and thus worth even less than the Vice Presidency of the US: The DPM’s power is entirely in the gift of the PM. It has mostly been a perch for a flightless bird.
Why then is the competition for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party apparently so well funded? You could see why the candidates might want the job. But what do backers get for their money if their man or woman wins?
The New Statesman is frequently frightening to read. But this week’s contained a scary extra: a full colour insert for the Peter Hain campaign. Running a national campaigning organisation on an issue that affects everyone in the country, I can’t afford to do that. Mr Hain may be an exotic shade of orange but is not in other respects politically colourful. His rivals have marginally different emphases in policy and are some more, some less personally likeable than he is… and that’s it. None can offer to change the country; and none is even offering to keep peace in the Labour Party. So who cares? Where does the money come from? Do they all – there are six contenders – have rich and indulgent mothers?
I do not have any time for Scientology (bunch of total loons, judging from their stated beliefs). I am not a fan of religion, full stop. Believing that one’s sins get removed on account of a guy who was tortured and killed by Romans, or believing that we come back on this Earth as animals, or get something called Karma, or Original Sin, are just so much rubbish to me. I do not think life lacks meaning without some Supreme Being. But then plenty of highly intelligent folk believe in these things, and pose no threat to me, nor do their adherents expect me to support their views. For me, tolerance is what counts.
Even so, religions, certainly those which make enormous claims about the world and arguably, mess up the lives of the people they influence, deserve to be scrutinised hard. For that reason, I watched the BBC ‘Panorama’ show on Monday and I must admit that it was a pretty compelling bit of television. The journalist who completely lost his temper with some very dubious characters from the Scientology outfit has my sympathy (yes, I am sympathising with a BBC journalist). These folk are jerks, and employ tactics that, as the journalist said, would not be the usual operating procedure of your average Anglican vicar.
On a lighter note, here is a reference to the classic South Park episode on Scientology.
On the BBC television news programme this morning, I glimpsed a brief and largely uncritical segment on the rollout of what are called Home Information Packs. These will be compulsory for people looking to sell their property and cost, so the BBC programme stated, about 500 pounds (a nice revenue earner for the government). The packs, or “HIPs”, will have to include details about the energy efficiency of a house and they are driven, in part, by the current focus on environmental issues. It is further evidence of how the green movement is replacing old-style socialism as a prime driver of regulation and tax.
The BBC programme profiled a number of people who have taken up the stirring job of checking people’s homes. They will inspect properties, take all manner of measurements, and generally have a wonderful time poking around the homes of would-be sellers of properties. The people on the show seemed a fairly pleasant, if faintly bland bunch – not the sort of people to get Britons irate. The image presented by the programme was all, so, British in its “what a jolly sensible idea to let people check around your home” sort of line that is bog-standard BBC these days. It was vaguely reminiscent of those old 1940s public information films shown in WW2 urging us all to cut the amount of water we use when taking a bath and to keep our gasmask with us at all times.
Tim Worstall, a blogger focusing on economic and environmental issues, has a suitably sceptical line on the need for compulsory Home Information Packs. If they are such a great idea for buyers and sellers of properties, then surely the market would react accordingly. I agree.
But leaving aside the daftness of these packs as a compulsory measure, the broader point here is how enforcement of HIPS is adding another layer of people to the public payroll. True, the HIP inspectors are not state employees, but self-employed. Even so, their jobs have been made possible by the HIP rules. This demonstrates that a lot of jobs today owe their existence to often-questionable legislation rather than consumer demand.
Remember, more than 900,000 public sector jobs have been created since 1997, at vast cost to the wealth-creating part of the economy. People are being recruited to inspect pubs and restaurants to ensure that consumers – even if they have the consent of the property owners – do not smoke. The increasing crackdown on cars in big UK cities means that traffic wardens are also a growth industry. Since 9/11, meanwhile, the security industry has expanded enormously, swelling the profit margins of firms like Kroll or Reliance. The trend is likely to continue. All this is a deadweight on the economy, even though in some cases, such as counter-terrorism and protection against thievery, it is necessary.
We keep wondering at this blog at what point Britons will ever start to seriously complain. ID cards? Not much of a general stir. Erosion of the right to trial by jury? Yawn. EU Arrest Warrant? Yawn again. But maybe things are moving. The recent proposal by the government to impose road pricing across the land and enforce it by tagging cars drew forth a deluge of complaints via the government’s own internet-based petition system. I wonder whether the prospect of busybodies crawling all over a home before it is put up for sale will have the same effect. Let’s hope so.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. “Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. “Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
– Michael Crichton on dangers of ‘consensus science’ in a 2003 speech, quoted in an article about global warming.
thanks Ben!
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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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