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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The great canard of the collectivists holds that a free-market in healthcare will assuredly result in healthcare providers hungrily pursuing maximum profits while abandoning the poor, the elderly and the vulnerable to a wretched and untreated fate.
So often and so passionately has this big lie been repeated that it is now accepted by most people in this country as an incontrovertibe truth. Nationalised healthcare, they say, puts people’s needs at the top of the agenda where there is no room for ugly money-grubbing.
Only they forgot about ugly bed-grubbing:
A nurse has been jailed for five years for trying to kill two elderly patients at a Cheshire hospital.
Barbara Salisbury, 47, was found guilty of trying to kill them to free up more beds at Leighton Hospital, in Crewe.
Rationed resources require desperate measures. In fact, and given the governmental obsession with reducing waiting times for hospital treatment, I am a little surprised that the Department of Health has not pinned a medal on this woman.
When she finally emerges from her time in stir, Ms Salisbury may well find herself being offered a job back in the NHS as a senior consultant.
Britain goes to the polls tomorrow to elect a round of representatives for the European Parliament, for UK Local Authorities and the office of Mayor of London.
Or, more accurately, about one-third of Britain goes to the polls. The other two-thirds cannot be bothered and, while I entirely sympathise with their attitude of non-engagement, it is my intention to buck the trend and cast my vote. I will explain.
I have never even attempted to conceal my contempt for the ‘democratic process’ as presently configured. In modern parlance, ‘democracy’ has become a euphamism for the perpetuance of a permanent political class, devoted to conducting their mischief without hindrance, objection or opposition. When all political candidates are required to sign up to a rigidly conformist and hegemonic agenda, the process of voting becomes a waste of time. At best, it is endorsement of the status quo, a rubber-stamped approval for ‘business as usual’. → Continue reading: This town needs an enema
It is strangely comforting to see that the ‘class war’ instincts of old Labour are not entirely dead yet:
John Reid, the Health Secretary, yesterday dismissed the demand for a blanket ban on smoking as “an obsession of the learned middle class”.
Speaking at a Labour Party event, he said he was reluctant to use compulsion to outlaw something that was a source of pleasure, particularly to working class people.
That Mr. Reid has to fight the corner of working-class people at a Labour Party event speaks volumes about the evolutionary path of the modern left.
Earlier, Mr Reid expressed his views even more bluntly when he took part in a round-table discussion with some of those invited to contribute to the consultation.
Told that they were discussing a smoking ban, Mr Reid said: “Let me play devil’s advocate. What enjoyment does a 21-year-old mother of three living on a sink estate get? The only enjoyment sometimes they get is having a cigarette.”
One participant objected quite strongly, telling Mr Reid her mother died of lung cancer.
But Mr Reid, a former chain smoker who has now given up, said it was best to provide people with information and let them decide what to do for themselves.
Now, perhaps, Mr. Reid can take the next logical step and denounce the levels of tax that working people have to pony up in order to enjoy their smoking habit. Then the bien-pensant can safely re-classify him as a ‘right-winger’.
Whoever came up with all this tosh about the world being a ‘global village’? Seems to me that different parts of the world have a very different way of going about things.
In Saudi Arabia, a BBC reporter gets gunned down and lies bleeding in the street:
Police said Mr Gardner tried to get bystanders to help him as he lay wounded in the street by crying out that he was a Muslim.
Now I like to think that here in dear old Blighty, we would rush to the aid of a badly wounded human being regardless of his religion.
Oh, unless the police are around to stop us:
A police force was accused yesterday of waiting too long to act after a shooting at a family barbecue left two sisters dead. One witness claimed that their lives could have been saved.
Roy Gibson, 70, said he spent an hour waiting for help to arrive as he tried to save one of the women. Paramedics were prevented from entering until Thames Valley Police had completed a one-hour assessment of any further risk to life.
By which time, there was definitely no risk to life because the victims were no longer alive.
That poor man in the straightjacket is having nightmares again. He is crying out in his sleep and banging his head off the walls: [note: link to article in UK Times may not be available to readers outside of UK]
EUROPEAN governments are to scrap dozens of “unnecessary” and “patronising” EU laws and directives under a plan to make the Union less bureaucratic and more in touch with the lives of its citizens.
The “bonfire of the diktats” will put an end to Europe-wide rules on the length of ladders that window cleaners can use, and laws on the materials that have to be used for children’s playgrounds.
The ambitious plan to roll back the rules made by the European Commission, which is being championed by the Dutch Government and supported by Britain, is a response to the growing concern that Brussels interferes too much in daily life, and that more decisions should be left to national governments.
About half of all laws in Britain are drawn up in Brussels and then adopted by Westminster. For environmental legislation, nearly 90 per cent of laws are made in Brussels, with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs threatened with fines if it does not put them into effect. There are 2,500 EU directives in force, with hundreds added every year.
A bit of ‘nice-guy’ PR for the run-up to the European Parliament elections to get us in a positive frame of mind. It is just a tease really. Seldom have I seen a proposal that is going nowhere on so many levels.
For every regulation they manage to scrap, two more will pop up to replace it. And even if they somehow manage to stop Brussels producing more laws, they will simply be minted at national level instead. That is what governments do. They have no other skills to offer the marketplace.
Persuading government not to enact new laws is like trying to persuade birds not to fly. You cannot change the nature of the beast. You have to clip its wings.
Four people were bragging about how smart their cats are. The first was an Engineer, the second an Accountant, the third was a chemist, the fourth was a Government Worker.
To show off, The Engineer called to his cat, T-square, do your stuff. T Square pranced over to a desk, took out some paper and pen and drew a circle, a square, and a triangle.
Everyone agreed that was a pretty smart cat, but the Accountant said his cat could do better. He called his cat and said, Spreadsheet, do your stuff. Spreadsheet went out into the kitchen and returned with a dozen cookies. He divided them into 4 equal piles of 3 cookies each.
Everyone agreed that was really good, but the Chemist said his cat could do better. He called his cat and said, Measure do your stuff. Measure got up, picked up a 500ml graduated cylinder, walked over to the fridge, took out a litre of milk, got a 300 ml glass from the cupboard, measured and poured exactly 275 ml of milk into the glass without spilling a drop.
Everyone agreed that was good too. Then the three men turned to the Government Worker and said, “What can your cat do”?
The Government worker called to his cat and said, Coffee Break, do your stuff. Coffee Break jumped to his feet, ate the cookies, drank the milk, pooped on the paper, screwed the other three cats, claimed he injured his back while doing so, filed a grievance report for unsafe working conditions, put in for compensation, and went home on sick leave.
[My thanks to Dr. Chris Tame who posted this to the Libertarian Alliance Forum.]
Compared to the length of time it took to hike up the taxes on tobacco, alcohol and petroleum, the great ‘junk food’ shakedown has been completed in remarkably quick time. HMG is clearly honing its modus operandi down to a fine art: [note: link to UK Times may not be available to readers based outside the UK]
BRITAIN’S biggest food companies are to be told by the government to pay an “anti-obesity” levy to fund new sports centres or face punitive laws restricting advertising, marketing and labelling.
Firms such as McDonald’s, Walkers and Cadbury Schweppes are to be asked to contribute tens of millions of pounds towards the sports facilities. The government is set to provide £1m for the scheme for every £3m pledged by the food industry. It will be used to build sports centres, gyms, football pitches and tennis courts.
The food industry confirmed this weekend that it was preparing to co-operate with ministers and could provide hundreds of millions of pounds to fend off regulation.
Of course, I knew this was coming but not even I was prepared for the ugly truth to be revealed quite this rapidly. The Treasury must be desperate for the cash. → Continue reading: The big pay off
To think that I was one of those deeply ill-informed people who thought that ‘resistance’ was merely the the ratio of the potential difference across an electric component to the current passing through it.
Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. I was so wrong:
RESISTANCE means saying no. No to contempt, arrogance and economic bullying. No to the new masters of the world: high finance, the countries of the G8, the Washington consensus, the dictatorship of the market and unchecked free trade. No to the quartet of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. No to hyper-production. To genetically modified crops. To permanent privatisations. To the relentless spread of the private sector. No to exclusion. No to sexism. No to social regression, poverty, inequality and the dismantling of the welfare state.
No to the abandonment of the South. No to the daily deaths of 30,000 poor children. No to the destruction of the environment. No to the military hegemony of a sole superpower. No to “preventive” war, to invasion, to terrorism and to attacks on civilians. No to racism, anti-semitism and islamophobia. No to draconian security measures. No to a police state mentality. No to dumbing-down. To censorship. To media lies. To manipulative media.
Resistance also means saying yes. Yes to solidarity between the six billion inhabitants of this planet. Yes to the rights of women. Yes to a renewed United Nations. Yes to a new Marshall plan to help Africa. Yes to the total elimination of illiteracy. Yes to an international campaign against a technology gap. Yes to an international moratorium that will preserve drinking water.
Yes also to generic medicines for all. To decisive action against Aids. To the preservation of minority cultures. And to the rights of indigenous peoples.
Yes to social and economic justice. And a less market-dominated Europe. Yes to the Porto Alegre Consensus. Yes to a Tobin tax that will benefit citizens. Yes to taxing arms sales. Yes to writing off the debt of the poor nations. Yes to banning tax havens.
To resist is to dream that another world is possible. And to help build it.
Got that? Good. Excellent. Carry on.
Growing up in the 1970’s I recall being rather spooked by dire warnings of an impending ice age and the threat that I would spend my adult life shivering in a cave. Some twenty years later that apocalypse vision had been melted clean away by the dire (and considerably shriller) warnings about global warming and, according to everyone who is anyone, I now face the threat of spending what remains of my adult life sizzling like a sausage.
Two decades in which to manage a complete polar reversal in doomsday-scenario is pretty good going but it pales into ‘also-ran’ status by an eerily similar polar switch in the rather more mundane field of eating disorders.
This is from the BBC website in July 1998:
Doctors have hit out at the media and advertisers for encouraging anorexia by portraying skinny supermodels as the beauty ideal instead of ‘more buxom wenches’.
The British Medical Association’s annual conference in Cardiff voted overwhelmingly for a motion condemning the media obsession with ultra thin supermodels.
Dr Muriel Broome, a former director of public health, said “the constant image of very thin models” encouraged girls to develop eating disorders. “We urge the media to be more responsible and show more buxom wenches,” she said.
I know not whether Dr Broome’s advice was acted upon, but I am now informed that we have, indeed, taken on the mantle of buxomness with some considerable gusto. From the BBC website today:
Improving children’s eating habits is the key to tackling an obesity “timebomb”, MPs have warned.
The Commons Health Select Committee attacks the government, food industry and advertisers for failing to act to stop rising levels of obesity.
From ‘ultra-thin models’ to ‘obesity timebombs’ in the space of slightly over half-a-decade. Now I am no statistician but I think even I am qualified to regard that as a quite remarkable national metamorphosis. → Continue reading: Fat of the land
Speaking as someone who is really far too cynical for his own good, I shall believe this when I see it:
Voters in next month’s European elections could shock the political establishment by giving the United Kingdom Independence Party more seats than the Liberal Democrats, a poll suggests today.
A YouGov survey for The Telegraph indicates that UKIP, which is committed to British withdrawal from the European Union, is ahead of the Lib Dems among those who are “very likely” to vote.
But I really and truly hope that I do see it.
Michael Moore must surely rank as one of the hottest properties in showbusiness. The guy only has to show up to get an award:
Michael Moore’s controversial polemic Farenheit 9/11 became the first documentary for nearly 50 years to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival last night.
The film, which contains scathing attacks on the business dealings of President George Bush as well as the first footage of American soldiers torturing prisoners in Iraq, beat off competition from more famous directors, including Wong Kar-Wai, Emir Kusturica and the Coen brothers to scoop top prize.
Moore, who was given a standing ovation by the Cannes crowd, told them: ‘I’m completely overwhelmed by this. Merci.’
So they chose a wanker over a Wong Kar but it is pointless to pretend that there was ever going to be any other outcome. And giving him yet another gold-plated bit of object d’art to place on his buckling mantlepiece is one thing but a standing ovation??!!
In truth this was not merely a nod of recognition but an act of worship by a gathering of the faithful. Nor is this starry-eyed circus any longer about the merits (or otherwise) of any particular manifestation of Moorish propoganda for the detail is irrelevant. It is the ‘vibe’ that counts.
No, this is not about the films or books of Michael Moore, it is about Michael Moore himself and what the luvvies believe he represents. He is the icon and the muse of anti-everything who tells them what they want to hear and dresses it up as revealed truth. His flock gathers at ceremonies to offer up their tributes and commune with him while he bestows his benedictions upon them.
He is St. Michael of Moore. Peace be upon him and may flowers bloom where he treads.
Our “Quote of the day” below, links to an information page about a new film called ‘Slap her… she’s French’.
I was sufficiently intrigued by the title to inquire further and, judging from the serious reviewer, it would appear to be nothing more than a run-of-the-mill, formulaic teen comedy which I shall most likely never see.
But, for some people, it is something far more sinister. Beneath the professional review is a comments box where members of the public (and the clinically insane) can leave their own reviews and where I stumbled upon this hilariously deranged rant:
Hollywood has always been very good at serving Republican propaganda. In the 80’s we had brainless flicks such as Rambo 2, Rocky 4 and Top Gun, just to name a few of them.
Since Bush Junior took the presidency in a quite dictatorial manner, his team and him have separated America from the rest of the world at a point never reached before.
From late 2000 till 9/11, they started spreading hateful propaganda against Russia (trying to wake up ghosts of the cold war?) and racist propaganda against Chinese people, calling US citizens not to treat them as full American citizens. Mr. Bush was desperately looking for an ENEMY. Their ARROGANCE and VIOLANCE is matched only by the one of the Islamist terrorists.
On September 11, 2001, he and his team were served the best pretext they could have ever dreamed of, by people as crazy as them. Instead of analyzing the situation in a pro-active way and fighting terrorism cleverly in order to eradicate it, the reacted like dumb, immature, arrogant teenagers and preferred bombing innocent civilians.
The order given to Hollywood was to use the nations preferring peace than war as villains in their industrial products they deliver to the rest of the planet they so ARROGANTLY SCORNED. Part of this was the `French Bashing’ of which we have excellent examples in NO-BRAINERS such as “Slap Her She’s French” (no comment), `Master&Commander’ (In the book, the villains are British. France saved America from the British invasion in late 18th century; remember La Fayette), `Johnny English’ (ha, ha, ha, a French King trying to take over the British Queen), `Matrix Reloaded’, `SWAT’, `Along came Polly’, etc.
Let’s hope that when Mr. J.F. Kerry has been democratically elected in 2004, this virulent arrogance should come to an end, and America is part of the world again.
But, apart from that, how was the film?
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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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