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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Samizdata quote of the day Phyllis Dixey – 1914 to 1964 – Striptease Artiste – lived here in flat number 15.
– The wording proposed last November for a new British Heritage blue plaque, but it proved controversial. I only just came across this story. Since then, I don’t know what has happened. Is this plaque actually going to materialise? What it says at the bottom of this recent news item, about another proposed blue plaque in honour of movie actress Margaret Lockwood, suggests not. If not, shame.
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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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Will someone not free us from this plague of plaques? Even here in Sydney, there are a lot of them! I think we should limit ourselves to one plaque per avenue, road, or street. Tourists like looking at major landmarks, anyway, not hard-to-read memorials.
Near where I live are plaques to George Moore (writer); Harold Nicolson (ditto); Ian Fleming (writer), TE Lawrence (Middle East troublemaker), Joseph Conrad (writer, sailor) and Winston Churchill (saviour of Western Civilisation, pig farmer, war correspondent, soldier, writer and painter). Not a bad collection.
Yes. I have no idea what happens in Australia with such plaques as these. Maybe there are indeed too many, of people who do not deserve such recognition. But in London they are infrequent enough, the commemorated are typically worthy enough, and there is enough else going on, for encountering one of these things to be a small urban pleasure. I think so, anyway.
I mean, who really minds being told, as they walk past some nondescript looking London house, that once upon a time Mozart stayed there?
It helps a lot that for once here is a type of sign that does not block out the view of anything else, other than a few bricks.
…and to which state body would you give the power to make such decisions?
I don’t know if the plaque you mention will materialize on a street somewhere, but soon after it will materialize on some fellow’s bedroom wall. Here in Chicago the city is addicted to posting honorary street signs on lamp posts, just under the actual street name. My doctor has a block named for him in honor of this distinguished career, as do rabbis, school principals and other local notables. A few years ago, however, they ran into trouble when they declared the street in front of Playboy Publishing’s HQ as Hugh Hefner Way. While the feminists were protesting the honor, the sign was stolen three times in two months, apparently by drunken college boys. Eventually the city gave up.
Sometimes things are just funny/interesting and they need not have a libertarian spin appended to them… for example one can admire SS military tailoring as a stand alone point without appending a proforma denunciation of national socialism followed by an exegesis on why taxation-is-theft. hence SS Officers should have purchased their own uniforms rather than via theft based taxation 😛
There is an unofficial blue plaque (or was) in Clayton Street, Newcastle which reads something like this:
“T.H. Huxley called upon a friend here in and found him to be out.”
Always amused me.
Anyway, if someone famous lived (or whatever) wherever shouldn’t it be the decision and financial responsibility of the owner of the property to erect something like that (or not)? I mean if I owned a pub that say Charles Dickens dined in then yeah I’d probably pay for it because it brings in trade.
Indeed the Midland Hotel in Manchester has at it’s main entrance an “unofficial” legend stating that here a Mr Rolls and a Mr Royce had a most fruitful business meeting…
I have seen the sign Nick.
I was looking for Manchester Free Trade Hall at the time.
But this had been destroyed (for ideological reasons?) and I came upon the hotel.
I would have thought the T.H. Huxley sign would be on a church.
This is my personal favourite: (Link)
Why does “artiste” have that “e” at the end? Isn’t the the French word for artist? Why would a random French word be on an English plaque?
A point about our Sydney plaques- they are usually on the footpath, so you need to peer down to read the small metal letters. You get eyestrain, and you impede the flow of pedestrians!
As for who decides, we have three levels of government, so Canberra could have first plaque rights, then the State could have a go, and if neither of these have put a plaque on a walkway, the local council can pollute the sidewalk with its own hero.