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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 “cannot be bothered” edition “For so many people to resile from what would once have been their natural responsibilities is an unprecedented social phenomenon and no one in public life appears to know what to do about it. The thing they agree on is that it is not a simple problem of management. It is damaging the country’s economy in catastrophic ways and it has moral dimensions that few politicians would dare to confront. In other words, it requires just the sort of large visionary message that has gone out of fashion.”
– Janet Daley, Sunday Telegraph (£), 18 February.
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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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Until I read the article I thought we were talking about birthrates. Apparently it’s about working from home.
@RlJ: Ah; in the absence of the full article, I did wonder. I presume people no longer regard it as their responsibility to be present in a particular place, just to perform functions for which they’re paid from any location they choose.
Sir Keir Starmer knows he does not have to win the election (he does not have to produce policies and argue for them) – he just has to watch as the elected government (rather different from the actual government) loses the election.
I have been campaigning for the Conservative Party since 1979, even when I was kicked out for a year (for private comments that were a lot milder than what some Members of Parliament were saying only yesterday) I was still expected to sign forms as the (unpaid – I have always been unpaid) Election Agent, and-so-on – and I will carry on helping till my Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) kills me. I was out about in the recent by election defeat – and I can tell you (gentle reader) that the candidate worked very hard indeed.
It did not matter how hard the Conservative candidate worked, and it did not matter how unsuitable the Labour candidate was for the area (and the Labour candidate shared none of the basic beliefs of the people of the area – indeed the Labour candidate despised the basic beliefs of the people of the area) what mattered on-the-doorstep was as follows…..
“You have broken your promises over the last 14 years, so I will not vote for you”.
This was the answer, again and again, from Conservative voters – they wanted lower taxes, not higher taxes, an end to mass immigration – not record high mass immigration, and an end to “Woke” censorship and persecution – not the massive extension of it that we have had over the last 14 years.
In that situation, on the doorstep, one could be a condescending arrogant prick and say “what are you blithering on about” – in which case one would have got a punch in the face, or one could say “I am very sorry” (and mean it – an apology is worthless if it is not meant) and move on to the next house.
Of course “Labour will be worse” the voters (or rather non voters – because they are not turning out to vote) KNOW that – but they are so angry with 14 years of broken promises on things such as “Wokeness” (Critical Theory Marxist censorship and persecution) and (most important of all) mass immigration (legal as well as illegal) that they want to punish us.
The time for talk, promises and excuses, is over – there must be “Action This Day” (to use the words of Winston Churchill) – for example mass immigration must be ended now (today) – and if Big Business and the Courts do not like that, they should be told to jump in the nearest lake.
Otherwise there is no point in having a majority in the House of Commons.
As for the decline in the fertility rate – this is part of the general decline in Civil Society (both religious and secular) that we have seen in almost every Western country since the 1960s.
For a little while it was hoped that that the United States might escape this cultural, societal, decline (hence Mark Steyn’s book “America Alone”), but now it is clear that America has joined the Progressive parade – and to an extreme degree, a collapse in the fertility rate and a massive rise in the suicide of white men, being signs of this.
Will both religious and secular fraternal associations revive? Will there be turning against such things as no fault divorce and industrial scale abortion? Will the traditional family revive?
Sadly I see no sign of such a turn-around. We are not seeing “cultural evolution” or the emergence of a “new society” – we are seeing, all over the Western world, cultural, societal, decline (and have been since the 1960s), which is turning into cultural, societal, collapse.
There may well be no Western world in a few years – things may be getting to a tipping point from which there can be no return.
You keep telling people that they are guilty of so many -isms, that safety rules are more important than living a free life, debate is not permitted, that the Great and Good know what is best for you, then eventually you end up with people who cannot be bothered.
H G Wells (in The Time Traveller) thought it would take far longer for the Eloi to evolve, but for practical purposes the Western World is nearly there…
Paul:
I heard yesterday that the Conservative candidate in Rochdale is away on holiday. It doesn’t sound as if the Conservatives are putting too much effort into that by-election.
As you say, the Conservatives have been losing by-elections because their supporters have stayed at home. Usually the Labour vote is little changed from the last election. But you are right. Why bother to vote Conservative when they have let the voters down on everything important since 2010? Low taxes, strong defences, immigration below 100,000? What a joke.
Of course Rishi Sunak could change this if he wanted, even now. But we know he won’t. He’ll lead the Conservatives into defeat, maybe oblivion, and then, like David Cameron, resign and let some other schmuck deal with it. He’s as rich as Croesus and the world’s his oyster. I doubt his commitment to Britain will last much longer than this October.
It’s politically depressing that the next general election will be between a party standing on its record of legally importing over a million people per year, and parties that want to import EVEN MOAR! Regardless of your stance on the issue, it is destructive of civilised political plurality to only have a choice of MOAR or EVEN MOAR!
I learned a new word today. Thanks.
@Paul Mark’s
When Margaret Thatcher was stabbed in the back by Tory jackals, many of us knew it was really because she opposed the vichyites.
In 97, the first thing pretty well that labour did, was the spiteful destruction of private pensions. A more blatant and calculated attack on – yes, I’ll use the phrase – the core tory vote it really was difficult to imagine.
What was the tory response months after the election?
What conclusion could labour possibly draw from the absolutely gutless refusal to even mention it?
What reason could any “tory voter” have to vote tory after.
The other lot are worse.
Well maybe in a year or two that how a “Tory revival” will begin.
The tories have to die, as, of course, do labour.
What follows?
Something quite nasty I suspect.
JohnK – I do not know what is going on up in Rochdale, for a year I lived near the town, but I did not visit – I regret that, as their are buildings in Rochdale that are worth visiting.
As for the broken promises – either their has been a lack of will to do what we promised to do, or the elected government has only very limited power over the government machine. I am not sure what would be worse.
Mark- the betrayal of Margaret Thatcher in 1990 was a disgrace and, with hindsight, may well have been the start of the final decline of this nation.
Factio Conservativa delenda est.
Sorry for the “theirs” rather than “theres” – I was in a hurry this morning, out visiting the public as I do every Saturday.
@Paul Mark’s
Doubtless true.
But as a tory insider of many years, in the specific case of Brown’s spiteful pension theft, why was the tory party so stubborn and wilful in its refusal to even acknowledge it?
This issue has been completely vapourised and it was essentially the tories that did this.
Explain that and you’ve explained why the two main parties are basically two cheeks of the same rancid arse.
Mark – we “acknowledged” it, we just did not do anything about reversing it!
Only one Conservative Leader in my lifetime has reversed at least a few things done by Labour governments – Margaret Thatcher.
Liz Truss (Mary O’Leary) tried to reverse the drift to the left – but was betrayed and smeared. Her name is now used as an insult – even by people who should know better than to be taken in by media (and Bank of England – international Corporate State) lies.
As for the other Conservative Party Leaders of my lifetime – no comment.
But it is very difficult to reverse statism – as the British political culture and government structure (Civil Service and non Civil Service bodies) is tied to “Social Reform” – i.e. ever bigger and more interventionist government.
This has been true for a very long time indeed.
@ Paul Marks
Yet you are still a member.
Do you think the tory party can be revived and restored to what it was?
Not impossible I suppose, but as far as I can see from the outside, I can only judge it on what it does, not what it says.
And what it does is to lie and assume that we are so stupid and gullible that we will believe – or that “the other lot is worse” will do the job for them.
The other lot(s) are no better of course.
Depressingly, from what voters do, this approach appears to be largely justified.
Mark – the Member of Parliament for my constituency is a friend, I also have other friends in the party around the country, so I would like to say “yes we can restore the party”.
But given how Lee Anderson M.P. and others (such as Andrew Bridgen M.P.) have been treated, it would seem it is only a matter of time before I am expelled – people like me will not be able to do anything to restore the party to such principles as Freedom of Speech and a smaller state, because we will be kicked out by those in control (whoever they are – it is not clear who is in control) – who at least appear to have a real antipathy towards ordinary Conservative voters. The sort of people who voted Conservative in the past and might be convinced to vote Conservative in the future are precisely the sort of people whose core beliefs they at least appear to dislike. Remember they did not say “Mr Anderson spoke in a clumsy way” or “we disagree with Mr Anderson” – they moved at once to PUNISH him, their knee-jerk reaction was to PUNISH a person for saying something they did not like. Even Members of Parliament are no longer safe from censorship and punishment.
This is the “ideological hegemony” of the left – of their doctrine that tolerance (one does not “tolerate” opinions one agrees with – it is precisely opinions that one DISagrees with that one tolerates) is “repressive tolerance” and that persecution is “liberation” – it is very upsetting to find the party that should be fighting this, following this world-view.
As for the Prime Minister – I am told that he is a very nice man who loves his family, but his recent statement to the House of Commons where he stated “unequivocally” that the Covid injections are “safe”, when they are clearly not safe, is a real problem.