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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Sir Humphrey returns (not that he ever went away) SkyNews’ Sophie Ridge reports:
Whitehall departments spent £1.4 billion in an attempt to save £159 million by sharing back-office functions such as personnel and procurement.
Similar methods in the private sector typically cut a fifth off annual spend within five years, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).
Sir Humphrey [in Yes, Minister – The Economy Drive (1980)]:
Asking a town hall to slim down its staff is like asking an alcoholic to blow up a distillery.
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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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1.4billion spent to save 159million really takes a special kind of genius 🙂
I think that Sir Humphrey and his wiley Whitehall ways are well worth studying!
And in other news, a spokesman for the Department of Energy has responded to the allegations of a recent report which determines that wind power is ineffective and exceedingly costly:
“If this sort of short-sighted analysis informed our policies we’d not meet our carbon emission targets and keep the lights on, and the consumer would certainly be worse off,” shrieked a DECC spokeswoman to Solar Power Portal, an industry-sponsored ‘news’ website.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/07/wind_power_how_much/page2.html
The real problem with watching 30 year old re-runs of ‘Yes, Minister’ is that, the first time round, we could approach it and enjoy it as satire, or even parody, while now we are forced to face the fact that it was a training manual which the government bureaucracy and its quangos have learned far too well.