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]
|
Samizdata quote of the day If Jan 1st 2021 comes along & UK has No Deal (or a Canada Deal) with EU, I will be very happy with Boris.
But on Jan 2nd 2021, I will be calling for Boris to be driven from power before he destroys the nation with his eco-fascist Net Zero lunacy & insane lockdowns.
– Perry de Havilland
|
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.
|
Boris was necessary, however hard it is to admit it, in getting the Tories out of the self-inflicted hole after the 2017 election and all the rest of it. If and when we get out of the EU more or less with our independence restored, the chap’s status in our history is secure.
But I agree that the Green agenda is a serious mistake, and a very costly one. The economics make no sense. As Lord (Nigel) Lawson said in an interview a few days ago, had he been asked, as Chancellor, to go along with this disastrous agenda, he’d have resigned on the spot.
And Mr Johnson’s love if the “big project” is childish, such as this nonsense about windmills. He should also shut down the High-Speed Rail link from London to the North, write off the damage done, and for a fraction of that cash, should invest in improving the quality and efficiency of our ports, which will be necessary if the EU tries to play silly arses over trade in future.
FYI, I have started to follow the “Power Hour” podcasts of US-based writer and commentator Alex Epstein. He recently had a book out called The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels. Here is his latest video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAssElQXhYo
The eco-lunacy is a potentially catastrophic blunder. There is no, and I mean none whatsoever, evidence for a climate emergency and those who argue for it are merely seizing it as a means to gain their ideological ends. How I wish he had hitched his wagon to a campaign to repeal the Climate Change legislation brought to us by an earlier wave of eco-lunatics. Such a repeal is a requirement for shaking off this madness.
I would suggest that Boris is not the driving force behind this self-destructive green policy, but rather the mother of his illegitimate (i.e. a bastard) child. Carrie Symons may seem a simpering, arm clinging, loyal woman, but recent reports of her increasing court of friends and supporters, quite a few now in positions of power, show who the driving force really is.
You’d better hope that Boris doesn’t sign up for a Non-Regression agreement with the EU. If he does, the Ecofascism he has already signed up for will have been baked in for ever.
Remarkable patience Perry, it’s perfectly clear to me that Mr Johnson is utterly incapable of leadership or honesty, and that he has no principles whatsoever and will do whatever is suggested to him so long as it is morally wrong. It has got to the point where I wish that Mr Corbyn had won narrowly n December 2019, the country would be freer now had that come to pass.
Penseivat, I think that you are right, there is a bastard in Downing Street, but bastardy is really a reflection on the parents, not the child, who is, naturally, blameless in respect of that condition.
I am coming round to the need for a 21st Century-style Bill of Attainder being required to restore life to being anything like sensible, with whole groups of people banned from holding public office, made to pay damages to the point of bankruptcy and clemency for those harassed by the State in 2020.
“But I agree that the Green agenda is a serious mistake”
It is not a mistake, it is totalitarianism.
Fine sentiments. My only objection is that they do not give much of an incentive for Boris to do the right thing on Brexit. Not that i can suggest a better strategy, mind you.
As for the Green Agenda: as i understand (and i might very well be wrong) Nassim Taleb argued that, even if there is no evidence that CAGW is going to happen, this is a case in which the precautionary principle applies.
This is one rare instance in which i must disagree with Nassim. The precautionary principle must be applied, first of all, to political power. It is just plainly insane to give arbitrary power to governments — but that is just what the Green Agenda does!
I cannot formulate my ideas sufficiently accurately or otherwise find a coherence that can be tested by experiment. I therefore require you to do as I say anyway as a precaution against a similarly untestable set of nightmarish consequences which I have lashed to a number I have just thought of follwed by a percentage sign and which I know present to you masquerading as a probability.
And they call it – without a single blush, mind thee – “following the science”. Bollocks is it. The Precautionary Principle when uttered by these colowns means that they just cannot win the argument rationally.
One more time – the Greenland Ice Cores.
“Nassim Taleb argued that, even if there is no evidence that CAGW is going to happen, this is a case in which the precautionary principle applies.”
That is a bloody ridiculous premise. There’s no evidence that Aliens will invade tomorrow, but we should spend all our resources building laser turrets pointing into space, just on the precautionary principle?
etc etc
There have variously been estimates that no deal BREXT would cost the UK 3% of GDP, suppose that is correct.
The Chancellor, Rushi Sunak has just announced the UK GDP has been decimated, actually decimated this year, in the ‘time of COVID mania’.
Since the Chancellor has been handing out sterling like confetti, just think Grenfell tower fraudsters x a million.
Sterling, welcome to Lira territory, but without the sun.
Boris? What can you say about Boris.
The main issue of Brexit is that the UK state culture is not better than the UE state one, in several stuff it appears even worse. It does not respect freedom more, it is not less social-fascist , it has not more freedom of speech, it is not less stupid economically.
That’s not an issue with Brexit. That’s an argument for Brexit. The government will now have to take ownership of its policies. No more hiding behind committees in Brussels nobody’s ever heard of.
Flubber: you are only making a fool of yourself if you argue against Taleb on the basis of nothing that you have read yourself, except for what I, not him, have written.
Especially when i myself declined any responsibility for any misunderstandings.
“That’s not an issue with Brexit. That’s an argument for Brexit. The government will now have to take ownership of its policies. No more hiding behind committees in Brussels nobody’s ever heard of.”
That is implying that policy results matter. I suspect for most part they don’t.
Since the intelligence of a people converge to the one of its journalists they might choose to be miserable as long as it gives them ideological/cultural comfort.
Just a reminder, Germany was already prosper than UK by 1970, 30 year after being destroyed.
I suspect UK entered into EEC because it was already at the end of the rope, morally and without ideas. I remember my father after a work visit to London telling me is shock by seeing people asking for money in streets in 1979 like was usual here in Lisbon.
As it happens, the great majority of London’s beggars for the last five years or so, at least in Westminster & the Royal Borough, are professional beggars from Romania working in organised groups.
Perry note that i said my father visited it in 1979(it could have been 1978 instead).
As in England’s capital, so too in Scotland’s capital.
Last year, it was obvious that just before Christmas to just after the new year, there were absolutely no beggars on the main streets. Why? They’d all flown home EasyJet to [wherever].
While walking to work, last but one Autumn. I’d regularly pass a beggar outside Iceland ( the store ), for a short period there were two, one, each side of the pavement. One by her accent a native, the other, I suspect not. One morning I accidentally caught the native’s glance ( but for the characteristic drug addled appearance, she could have been quite the looker). At which she launched into a spiel of how unfair it was that Scottish beggars couldn’t even beg unmolested on their own streets because of the foreigners. Couple of days later the local druggie/beggar had abandoned her spot to the granny with a pile of dirty bags.
Shortly after, I passed the whole operation congregated outside the then recently shuttered Frazers**, distributing their plots and planning their day. Begging is a corporate operation, now.
Progress, I guess.
**Rumour had it that the empty Frazers building on Edinburgh’s Princes St. was to be repurposed to another Hotel ( Not that Edinburgh needs one more]. That worked out well!
Thanks, COVID maniacs.
Oh yes! Politically, ‘managed decline’.
Our political class were already at the end of the rope, and bankrupt of ideas, and we were led by that Paedophile** Edward Heath. As Thatcher demonstrated a decade later, get off the backs of the population, and they can do quite well, without central planning, thanks.
In fact, the loss of 10% of our GDP this year is a direct result of the dead hand of Central Planners. What else is SAGE? But the modern day Politburo.
Politicians, incapable of learning anything.
** According to the report by the Wiltshire police. Delivered, of course, safely after Heath’s death, they had enough evidence in six of forty cases to interview Heath under caution.
On that we’ll have to disagree. I think people are pretty cognizant of the year to year changes in their neighborhood, good or bad. They may not connect those changes to specific policies, but they’ll blame the people in charge for a declining quality of life.
I seem to remember that Tocqueville already remarked, in his essay on Pauperism, on the much larger percentage of paupers in England as compared to Portugal. That does not mean that England was poorer than Portugal at the time, in fact it was much richer. Tocqueville blamed the welfare system.
If Alexander Johnson was replaced, would not the new Prime Minister have to obey the same Agenda 21 – Agenda 2030 policies?
After all the United Kingdom has been signed up for these “legally non binding” polices since 1992 – and the supposedly “legally non binding” policies are in many British laws now.
An entire generation of Civil Servants and Local Government Officers (and so on) have been brought up with these policies – “Sustainable Development”, which is not just endless “Green” taxes and regulations – it also has a “Cultural” dimension, broadly in like with Frankfurt School Marxism which has been a big influence on British government policy since the 1970s (for example openly Marxist academics were advisers on Home Office pushed legislation in the 1970s)_and even the 1960s.
YES it is possible for a political leader to REJECT the polices pushed by the administrators and influences (including Big Business – who are absolutely rotten-to-the-core), but then they get removed.
Take the case of President Trump – someone removed by BLATANT Election Fraud.
I think the fact it was BLATANT is important – it was not subtle, not at all.
The international establishment were sending a very clear message – and one just uphold by the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has made it horribly clear that it DOES NOT CARE about Election Fraud – only two Supreme Court judges (Justices Thomas and Alito) have shown moral character when it mattered – so much for all the effort that was made to appoint a certain three other Supreme Court Justices.
“Oppose the totalitarian agenda – and you will be REMOVED” – that is the message that has been delivered by the removal of President Trump.
So, Perry, would it not be a political suicide for a new British Prime Minister to fundamentally change policy? Would they not be removed by the establishment elite – just as President Trump has been.
Still even a few changes to the details of policy are worth having. And a new Prime Minister would not be tied to the details of policy.
By the way – it is about time we stopped calling Alexander Johnson “Boris” Johnson.
There is no such person as “Boris” Johnson (although, yes, that is one of the names on his Birth Certificate) – that is a Election Persona. His name is Alexander – or “Al” to his friends (and none of us are friends of the Prime Minister).
Or just call him Prime Minister – which is what he is. At least to the moment he went against the basic international agenda (if he did that, he would not stay Prime Minister very long).
What’s the sudden urgency about the Rectification of Names??
Thanks Snorri
http://civitas.org.uk/pdf/Tocqueville_rr2.pdf
Paul (Paul Marks, December 12, 2020 at 6:29 pm), I would agree with Snorri (Snorri Godhi, December 13, 2020 at 12:27 am) that Boris is Boris in the public domain. I question whether he could change that even if he wanted it.
As you say, ‘Boris’ is one of the names on his birth certificate. When Prince Charles becomes King he will have the opportunity to be Charles III or to reign under another of his names. Boris may become Lord Johnson of Brexitref someday. Until then, he’s Boris whether he or we like it or not.
(Unless he were to copy a certain E. Page for a day and then come back again, of course. He could come back as ‘Alexander’, in which case the UK police might visit you for double-dead-naming him if you said ‘Boris’. There’s always a solution to these things if you are willing to think outside the box. But I don’t think the PM’s public-domain name is a problem needing a solution – let alone this one. 🙂 )
You’re welcome lucklucky!
Good to see that my memory did not fail me about Portugal being mentioned by Tocqueville.
It would be awkward to call Boris by his last name, since sons of John are a dime a dozen 🙂
It would be inconvenient to call him ‘Alexander’, not only because it doubles the number of syllables, but also because of potential confusion with the Great, and several Romanovs.
Returning to the situation that UK is in, it think the die was cast with WW2 historical compromise: Churchill run the War, Labour run the country. Then in my opinion the most disastrous government of post war: Clement Atlee and the engineered poverty of permanent rationing.