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]
|
Four decades ago, the Guardian newspaper dared not defy its then-powerful printsetting unions – so its morning editions often had unfortunate typos. Sometimes these were spotted by journalists at what would have been just-in-time moments before the print-run began, but woe betide anyone who dared alter the type with his own un-printsetter-unionised hand – or suggest that union-negotiated printsetter hours be disregarded.
The Guardian has been called the Grauniad ever since. (The unions are gone but the tradition lingers – in 2014, the Guardian reported that a crucial UN summit sought “a global agreement to find climate change before the end of the year.”)
When the chance timelines of separate stories resulted in last Tuesday’s front-cover, I think it likely some, even at the Grauniad, noticed something. In live broadcasts, I understand how unfortunate adjacencies in BBC news may juxtapose themselves too late to be avoided. But at the Grauniad, there must have been long minutes, if not hours, before the moment when the print-run began and the cover below also appeared on the web that is forever.
But clearly, noone at the Grauniad dared say anything. It’s not just us who “can’t say that”; they also silence themselves.
(h/t David Thompson, well worth reading on this, via Instapundit)
Mrs May’s Northern Ireland Secretary, The Rt. Hon. Karen Bradley MP, has given a candid interview in which she volunteered her (to some astounding) ignorance of Northern Ireland when she took the job of Northern Ireland Secretary in January this year.
Ms Bradley said she was surprised by the politics of the region upon her appointment.
“I freely admit that when I started this job, I didn’t understand some of the deep-seated and deep-rooted issues that there are in Northern Ireland,” she said.
“I didn’t understand things like when elections are fought for example in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice-versa.
“So, the parties fight for the election within their own community. Actually, the unionist parties fight the elections against each other in unionist communities and nationalists in nationalist communities.
I do wonder what sort of conversation and with whom led to the penny dropping…
The post of Northern Ireland Secretary, whose function is to act more or less like a colonial governor eager to let the natives manage themselves, is one that has, in my imagination, been given by the Prime Minister to an MP who is (a) tough enough to face up to the job and (b) disposable enough for the Prime Minister to miss the least from those in category (a) should the assassins strike. Nowadays, (b) is less of a concern.
A brief bio, Ms Bradley appears to be 48, a Maths graduate, an MP since 2010 and a former tax manager (whatever that is), a former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (in the UK, not in East Germany) and a Remainer. Per the article, by 1979, aged 9, politics were an issue in her household, and she has long known that there was terrorism in Northern Ireland.
Of course, who people vote for in Northern Ireland is determined, in every case, by the decisions of the individuals concerned, just like anywhere else, well unless they are dead Democrats, or North Koreans etc. But it seems a fair assessment of the situation that members of one community won’t vote for candidates from parties representing the other (although in some areas, tactical voting for the least bad major candidate might be a good idea).
What astounds me about this MP’s revelation is not that she made it, there’s no reason why the odd frank politician might not make it, but rather that she has spent over 2 years in the Cabinet of Her Britannic Majesty’s government without her ignorance coming to light. Frankly, I would have expected to find this sort of ignorance about Northern Ireland in a farmer in Bhutan, not an MP for 8 years in the Conservative and Unionist Party. I would expect most socialists to be positively and wilfully mis-informed about Northern Ireland.
But someone politically active might have noticed, in no particular order, the Hunger Strikes, the Warrington bomb, the IRA mortar attack on Downing Street, the Marching Season issue, and thought “What is this all about?“.
To me this situation begs (edit: poses) a number of questions:
1.How do you go through life in the UK, with an interest in politics, without finding out anything, anything at all, about the fundamentals in one part of the UK, where the news has, for decades, been mostly about violence and terror? Is it that a Comprehensive education positively blocks the mind from seeking explanations or causes?
2. Does it matter if a politician knows nothing at all, about the area they ‘manage’? Is such a politician in a position to judge when being played by their civil servants or others, like a fiddle?
3. How do you become an MP and Cabinet Minister without anyone rumbling your ignorance?
4. How many more MPs are there out there with this sort of perspective? (And can we honestly expect any principled opposition to government from our MPs?)
I would of course, contrast this ignorance to the cultivated ignorance of the British official in colonial Hong Kong who said that he had no need of statistics to tell him how many people lived in any particular area; he knew such information would be used for statist mischief.
On a positive note, the good Secretary of State has cut spending ever so slightly.
Earlier today Ms Bradley announced that members of the legislative assembly in Northern Ireland would have their pay cut from £49,500 to £35,888 and then by a further £6,187 amid an ongoing stalemate at Stormont.
This is after them doing no work at Stormont for over 18 months.
Which is to say that I understand the importance of the causes that equal opportunity activists and progressive academics are ostensibly championing. But pursuit of greater fairness and equality cannot be allowed to interfere with dispassionate academic study. No matter how unwelcome the implications of a logical argument may be, it must be allowed to stand or fall on its merits not its desirability or political utility.
– Ted Hill
Leave means leave
– Marina Wheeler
“From a libertarian perspective, the best course of action is not to elevate Trump to Satan or to Saturn, but to acknowledge that he is a mixed bag. In this, he’s perhaps more like Bill Clinton than anyone wants to admit. The major successes of the Clinton years—welfare reform, balanced budgets, capital-gains tax cuts, acknowledgment that the “era of Big Government was over”—came not out of one faction winning but the tension among various factions. If there is a problem to be solved, it’s not a president who, like his predecessors, refuses to cut the size, scope, and spending of government. It’s Congress, which has abdicated its constitutional role of actually writing legislation. And it’s government at all levels, which seeks to control and regulate the hell out of social and economic innovation in the name of some imaginary greater good. There are midterms afoot, so it’s easy to understand why people in the dying Republican and Democratic parties are desperate to view everything through partisan lenses. But the rest of us, especially libertarians, are free of such blinders and do well to remember that independence means first and foremost not making everything about politics.”
– Nick Gillespie.
It was tides. No, chemtrails. Or Trump? No, Jews, you can never go wrong blaming Jews. Or maybe it was just ‘bad luck‘. Or perhaps Brexit? Ah, it was global warming! Yes, global warming is what stymied the wise policies of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. For sure.
– Perry de Havilland, helpfully providing feedback when a thoughtful fellow on Twitter suggested we need to figure out what caused the crisis in Venezuela.
ITV’s Political Editor Robert Peston says,
David Davis may win his Canada-style Brexit deal
David Davis may have won.
What do I mean?
Well I am hearing from multiple sources that the only trade deal the EU’s lead negotiator Michel Barnier will countenance is Davis’s cherished Free Trade Agreement, what he called Canada Plus, rather than any version of May’s Chequers plan.
Here for example is the debrief of an MP on the Brexit select committee chaired by Hilary Benn, who met Barnier yesterday in Brussels:
“Remarkable how dismissive Barnier was of the two central pillars of Chequers – customs and common rule book for goods. It’s not a matter of how it will fare in Parliament. It won’t be agreed by the EU. We are back to Canada-style FTA”.
The Brexiters on the select committee are ecstatic; the Remainers are in abject despair. And to be clear, Barnier was not putting on a special act for British MPs. I am hearing exactly the same about him from Brussels and EU sources.
Now when he was Brexit secretary, Davis came in for a lot of stick, not least from his own ministerial and civil-servant colleagues, for not being ambitious or diligent enough when negotiating with Barnier – and in the end May and her senior Whitehall adviser on Brexit Olly Robbins went round the back of him and came up with their own Brexit plan. Which prompted David to quit.
But for more than two years he told me a Canada-style arrangement was the only realistic proposition. And it looks as though he was right.
Another well-placed source sees what is happening as an extraordinary but powerful alliance between the EU purists and zealots represented by Barnier and the Tories’ True Brexiters of Davis, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and the European Research Group.
Odd bedfellows and strange alliances have always fascinated me. Tell me your tales of them, from history, fiction, politics or your own lives. Oh, and if you want to, talk about how or if Brexit is gonna happen, too.
I tried to get people to care about the pointless “security” provided by the TSA, which I see, in part, as obedience training for the American public to be docile in the face of having their rights yanked from them.
Surprise, surprise, scanners are toddling off from the airport to other areas of American life. Recently, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced a plan to begin deploying full-body scanners in the LA subway system.
– Amy Alkon, The Trajectory Of The Restriction Of Privacy And Freedom
On 3 September 1939 the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. But we are in no danger of forgetting that.
When did you last think about Beslan?
Antifragility applies to emotional health as well. When you guard children against every possible risk – do not let them outside to play or walk home alone – they exaggerate the fear of such situations and fail to develop resilience and coping skills. Stresses are necessary to learn, adapt and grow. Without movement, our muscles and joints grow weak. Without varied life experiences, our minds do not know how to cope with day-to-day stressors. Measures designed to protect children and students are backfiring. Fragility is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think certain ideas are dangerous, or are encouraged to do so by trigger warnings and safe spaces, you will be more anxious in the long run. Intellectual safety not only makes free and open debate impossible, it setting up a generation for more anxiety and depression.
– Matthew Lesh
Red China has, like the mature totalitarian society that it is, a system of ‘Social Credit‘, as Wikipedia puts it neatly:
The system is a form of mass surveillance which uses big data analysis technology.
The excellent YT channel, China Uncensored, has a video on this system.
Of course, the UK has nothing like this yet, everything with the State is a little bit feeble and almost useless, for now. But a little chink in the armour of our free society has appeared. The UK ‘Honours System’, we now know, depends on you not being in the ‘bad books’ of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (which combines the Inland Revenue – personal and corporate taxation, with Customs and Excise). Note that it is not that you have to commit a criminal offence or even a civil transgression with your taxes, it is enough that you be under suspicion of avoiding paying tax lawfully.
HM Revenue and Customs’ reported policy of advising against giving honours to tax-avoiding celebrities has been backed by Sir Vince Cable.
Celebrities who use lawful but controversial schemes are being “blacklisted” to protect the reputation of the honours list, says the Times.
A Freedom of Information request showed a traffic light system was used to identify an individual’s suitability.
The Liberal Democrat leader said HMRC’s tough stance was perfectly reasonable.
“The principle is right, I think the public is fed up with abusive tax avoidance by individuals and companies,” Sir Vince told the BBC.
He said: “It seems perfectly reasonable to me that the Inland Revenue should be taking a tough line on tax avoidance.”
Sir Vince, a former business secretary, added that some celebrities may “wonder why they’ve been caught up in it” as they may be unaware they have been involved in “aggressive tax avoidance” because accountants handle their affairs.
And how does this work?
HMRC analyses nominees for honours to check the risk of them being exposed over their tax affairs.
The FOI response revealed that people are categorised as green if they are low risk, amber for medium risk and red for high risk.
My first objection to this is that ‘Honours’ don’t exist, except as bits of ribbon, metal and enamel etc. There is the ludicrous fantasy that the Sovereign can spot ‘worthy’ individuals and somehow bestow ‘honours’ on them. What happens is, of course, that some people write someone’s name on a list, hand over a bit of painted metal and a ribbon and that person becomes honoured. If there is a scientific test that can tell me how someone changes when they receive an ‘honour’, and that this is not a voluntaristic fantasy, I’d be happy to hear about it.
My second objection to this is that is the law of England (and indeed the UK) that no one is obliged to pay more tax than that properly due. Unless I am very much mistaken, this is the law of the land still (edit See Mary C’s helpful comment); the case of The Commissioners of Inland Revenue v The Duke of Westminster established, in 1935, under George V, the following from Lord Tomlin’s speech in the majority:
Apart, however, from the question of contract with which I have dealt, it is said that in revenue cases there is a doctrine that the Court may ignore the legal position and regard what is called “the substance of the matter,” and that here the substance of the matter is that the annuitant was serving the Duke for something equal to his former salary or wages, and that therefore, while he is so serving, the annuity must be treated as salary or wages. This supposed doctrine (upon which the Commissioners apparently acted) seems to rest for its support upon a misunderstanding of language used in some earlier cases. The sooner this misunderstanding is dispelled, and the supposed doctrine given its quietus, the better it will be for all concerned, for the doctrine seems to involve substituting “the incertain and crooked cord of discretion” for “the golden and streight metwand of the law.” 4 Inst 41 Every man is entitled if he can to order his affairs so as that the tax attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it otherwise would be. If he succeeds in ordering them so as to secure this result, then, however unappreciative the Commissioners of Inland Revenue or his fellow taxpayers may be of his ingenuity, he cannot be compelled to pay an increased tax. This so-called doctrine of “the substance” seems to me to be nothing more than an attempt to make a man pay notwithstanding that he has so ordered his affairs that the amount of tax sought from him is not legally claimable.
So even if you pay all taxes properly due under the law, you (or your accountant) might have been too clever by half, and you might have kept some of your own money, how is that wrong? I’m sorry, but I thought that King John no longer reigned. After all, if people pay more tax than they are due as a condition of getting an honour, isn’t that paying for them? Wasn’t Maundy Gregory put in jail for that?
My third objection to this is that an individual’s tax affairs are private, here is the declaration that Revenue Officers and Inspectors are required to make on taking up their positions:
Part III
Inspectors, Collectors and other Officers
” I, A.B., do solemnly declare that I will not disclose any information received by me in the execution of the duties which may from time to time be assigned to me by the Board of Inland Revenue except for the purposes of my duties, or to the Board of Inland Revenue or in accordance with their instructions, or for the purposes of any prosecution for an offence relating to inland revenue, or in such other cases as may be required by law.”
I fail to see how giving a nudge or a wink about someone’s affairs can be reconciled with this requirement, especially when it’s about them having followed the law all and having been smarter than the politicians and tax bureaucrats.
It has long been the case that the rule of law has died in this country, and some of our politicians have even boasted about it.
Isn’t it time to stick a fork in the ludicrous Honours system, and stop pretending? Most are not even decided on by the Queen, but by bureaucrats, at your expense. Even better, stick a fork in our tax system and acknowledge that paying as little tax as possible the honourable thing to do.
US Senator John McCain, an ultra-hawk super-statist on the leftmost edge of GOP, kicked the bucket recently. And it seems that this is big news, given the constant stream of articles on the topic ever since. But why is that? And in particular, why are the BBC and Sky, both UK based channels, headlining this when when the vast majority of people outside the USA have a level of interest approaching zero? Yes, it warrants reporting but why is such an event being bigged up like this? Was it because he had the good manners to lose an election to Barack Obama?
|
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.
|
