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 The purpose of the NHS is political, not medical. In the UK, in our Coronation of the State as our Bountiful Lord, it is the Crown, the dole is the Orb and State Education is the sceptic sceptre.
Those who question the State threaten to leave you without medical treatment, leading to a horrible death, or starve or be illiterate. Yet a Slaughterhouse like the Mid-Staffs can kill on a scale that an early 1940s German bureaucrat might admire, and nothing happens until hospital the pile of corpses becomes too obvious for excuses not to be shuffled out.
– Samizdata commenter Mr. Ed
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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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Someone needs to make a cartoon of that 😀
‘…at the hospital..’ (IPad).
One of the reasons the NHS was introduced was to get Britain to fight during WW2. The Australians in North Africa were amased that the British soldiers talked about how wonderful things would be the NHS whereas they talked about R&D, looked normal soldiers.
That’s a weird interpretation of history Regional. Somehow I doubt my dad and his mates outside Tobruk were enthusing about the NHS while they puffed on their Woodbines.
Er no Regional, like Bill, I doubt my dad, who was a cook for a Catalina Flying boat squadron in Sri Lanka, and caught every tropical disease known to man, including recurring Malaria, was thinking… Oh I’ll be quids in when I get home and they invent the NHS.
Bill B. and RAB,
Thanks for your feedback, I have no problem with you disagreeing with me, remember one doesn’t fit all.
It’s not a problem of us disagreeing with you Regional, it’s because you are factually inaccurate.
RAB,
To be factually incorrect about the mindset of the times?
When Chamberlain returned from Munich, the majority of the public were in agreement. I don’t blame them. The day after that Hitler lost the war in that Britain began setting a wartime economy and preparing for the Battle of Britain where the Germans were routed and Hitler attacked Russia without securing his flanks.
Huh? Chamberlain? Look that was 1939, and not 1942 when the Beveridge report came out. Most Brits were avoiding getting blown to bits by German bombs or shot by Germans trying to keep them out of Fortress Europe to pay much attention to what was in the Communist…er Labour Manifesto of the time. It was a Coalition government after all. The Labour Party promised Heaven on earth in 1945, and won big-time. We are still paying for it to this day.
I understood vaguely that the British Army had ‘Education officers’ (rather like Major Joyce, later a Labour MP) in the War, who went around propagandising for the Labour Party, so I can well believe Regional’s point.
Those officers were nothing like the Red Army Zampolits mind.
On the kill rate – not so Mr Ed.
The 1940s Germans killed much faster than the incompetent people in Mid Staffs.
Remember how shocked the Germans at Belson were by the British hangman’s rule of no more than eight executions a day.
A German camp could kill more than that in a few seconds.
These British types with their restrictive practices, holding back the production line of death…….
I’m an old geezer. I was born in 1944. My dad was a Gunner (Ubique!) with three stripes, who was the very definition of what would many years later be called a diamond geezer. He kicked off his war in Narvik and ended it with a Blighty wound in Salerno, which gave him and mum time to produce me. We moved around a bit but I grew up mostly on Council Estates in London and Southampton and joined the RN as soon as I could, serving on Ark Royal from 1966 to 1973. I say these things because I’m not that far removed culturally from the wartime generation. My missus always joked I was always one fad out of step with what was happening (so I was a Teddy Boy 10 years after that was the done thing). So believe me mate, what people talked about wasn’t the NHS, it was how to scrounge some extra fags, and did you see the legs on that Wrens on the Rock, and blimey old Toppy got the screaming abdabs after someone nicked his snorkers! That’s what people talking about, not the NHS. Trust me on that.
Antony Beevoir,the historian, had a few pieces in the mail last week (I presume he has a new book out), and some of it came as a suprise to me (but thinking about possibly not so much), in that he said that British troops were different from American and German troops in that they had a Trade Union mentality, of strict demarcation lines… that’s not MY job mate! sort of thing. Engineers, once a bridge was built, would be loath to man a machine gun etc. This hampered our fighting efficiency.
This did not pertain to Special Forces like the Commandos, Paras and SAS though.
Huh! That’s very interesting, RAB. I think I might go see what I can see. I heard Mr. Beevor, along with Andrew Roberts and Richard Overy defending Churchill, and three witless gints (my new Britishism for today! — I hope I’m using it correctly? *g*) including our Pat Buchanan, trying to knock the Last Lion to pieces. Speaking of which, has anybody read Vol. 3? I’m dying to, but the used price has to come down first.
Oh. The panel.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?288693-1/legacy-winston-churchill
Very interesting.