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But still under sentence of death.
That is why I have such mixed feelings about the apparent breakdown of talks to finalise an EU Constitution:
European leaders are playing down the scale of divisions at their Brussels summit that made it impossible for them to agree on a constitution for the EU.
The can play it up, down or any way they damn well please. This is not the end, merely a brief setback. There is far too much vested interest in this wretched process for it to be simply left at that.
Nor has this impasse been brought about by anything as welcome as reflection or second thoughts. Assuming any of the participants have ever read this monstrous charter, it is probably a stretch to assume that they have even given it a first thought. No, the bandwagon has been brought to a grinding halt by an intractable bunfight over their respective looting voting rights:
Negotiations broke down over how voting will work when the EU expands from 15 to 25 members in May.
Poland and Spain insisted on keeping voting rights already secured, while France and Germany want a system to reflect their bigger populations.
Glueing an entire continent into a permanent state of indenture will have them feverish to sign the dotted lines but fail to stroke their egos sufficiently in the process and they will make a brave stand. I have long since passed the point of expecting reason or common sense to prevail; there is not enough of either of those qualities among Europe’s political classes to fill a thimble. But at least their over-arching need to all get their snouts in the trough has worked in our favour (albeit for now).
But, lest we forget, Mr Velveteen (and his huddle of Vichyites in the Foreign Office) is no better. He simply cannot wait to get this whole train back onto the tracks:
Tony Blair insisted, however, that the humiliating inability of heads of government to get beyond the first items on the summit agenda did not spell doom for the constitution. “We have got to find a way through. We have got the time to do it,” he said.
If Mr Blair gets his way this country will cease to exist in any meaningful or material sense. We will have been delivered up as a mere component of a big, despotic, inescapable dirigiste asset-stripping operation. This is what he wants and he wants it more than anything else.
But why? Why does he want to assassinate this country? What is impelling him and this cadre of political fixers to want to drive a dagger through our hearts? If we can find the answers to those questions then maybe we have a means of turning this stay of execution into a true and lasting victory.
About a month ago, Norwegian blogger Bjorn Staerk composed a sumptuous satire of the marxoid mentality in a parodistic review of the Lord of the Rings:
Working hard to foil the plans of these good, decent white folks are the “evil” Saruman, and the even more “evil” Sauron, rulers of two countries called Isengard and Mordor. Both are portrayed as near-demonic in their hatred of our white heroes. Sauron is no more than a big, red eye, hovering in the air, clearly implying that he’s some kind of “Devil”. Both have massive armies at their disposal, consisting entirely of filthy, ugly monsters that happen to be black, every single one of them.
I wonder how many people read that, chuckled and thought to themselves that, in reality, no respectable left-wing commentator or pundit could ever possibly plumb the depths of such absurdity?
If you were one of those people, you were wrong, because Bjorn Staerk’s creation was both witty and remarkably prescient.
British socialist and Independent columnist, Johann Hari has not only risen to the bait, he has grabbed hold of it and ripped it to shreds in a feeding frenzy. Perhaps Mr Hari also read the Bjorn Staerk piece, got entirely the wrong end of the stick and decided to follow its lead. More likely, though, that he thought this up all by himself.
In an editorial he has called ‘Oppose Tolkein!’ (which itself sounds as if it has been lifted straight out of the Student Trotskyite Handbook), Mr Hari warns the world that the Tolkein classic is, in fact, a thinly-veiled Nazi screed:
The most obvious is racism. The purely evil Orcs are, in Tolkien’s words, “squat, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant-eyes”. The enemy is the Dark Lord and he lives in the Black Land. The heroic hobbits and elves are, by contrast, uber-Aryan and ethnically pure. Ideals of “blood” and its purity are always sloshing around his narrative. For example, the Men of Gondor – “the high men” – are descendants of the Numenorians, the greatest of all warriors. Over the centuries, they have become “degraded” because of breeding with inferior races. When their bloodline is pure, as in Aragorn’s descendants, the strength of the original Lords of the West is retained.
Read Bjorn Staerk and then read Johann Hari. Can you tell the difference? No, neither can I. Mr Hari has provided definitive proof for what we have all long suspected: that no satire on the thought processes of the modern left can be regarded as exaggeration.
As well as writing for the Indie, Johann is also a regular contributor to Harry Hatchett’s blog where he and his fellow travellers are forever accusing free market campaigners of holding views which are ‘out of touch’ and ‘unpopular’. Deliciously ironic then that Johann should elect to publish his laughable denunciation not 24 hours before the British public votes ‘Lord of the Rings’ as their ‘favourite ever book’.
I am also given to believe that he is considered in many circles to be something of a rising star of the British left. Judging from this kind of form, I can only concur.
“Good evening, this is the news from the BBC, 25th December 2010. Several arrests were made today after a dawn raid on an illegal Christmas celebration in Hertfordshire. Acting on a tip-off, armed officers swooped on the residential premises where they found a secret grotto, a fully-decorated Christmas Tree and up to two dozen suspects unwrapping gifts and singing carols. The police also recovered large quantities of contraband including a plate of mince pies, a string of fairy lights, a whole stuffed turkey and a sackful of toys.
The raid came as a part of ‘Operation Tolerance’ which is designed to curb the alarming spread of Christmas-crimes in the community.”
That’s a joke, right? Ridiculous? Alarmist? Wildly over-the-top? Gross exaggeration? Undue pessimism? Perhaps.
A church has been told that it cannot publicise its Christmas services on a community notice board to avoid offending other religions.
The Church of England may be the established faith of the United Kingdom. But Buckinghamshire county council regards it as a “religious preference group” and the ban was upheld yesterday.
A spokesman for the Tory-controlled council confirmed the distinction, explaining that because the service contained Christian prayers it was against policy.
Margaret Dewar, who is responsible for the council libraries, said: “The aim of the policy is to be inclusive and to respect the religious diversity of Buckinghamshire.”
Peter Mussett, the council’s community development librarian, said his member of staff was right not to display the poster.
“We have a multi-faith community and passions can be inflamed by religious issues,” he said. “We don’t want to cause offence to anyone.”
Well, they managed to offend me.
The Conservatives have at long last committed themselves to a tax-cutting agenda:
The Conservatives plan to offer tax cuts at the next general election in a shift aimed at highlighting the divide between their policies and the tax increases introduced by Labour.
So is that settled then?
Oliver Letwin issued a statement clarifying the party’s position after earlier appearing to slam the door on a manifesto commitment to reduce the tax burden.
In an interview with the Telegraph yesterday, he surprised senior colleagues by declaring: “We will not go to the polls at the next election saying that we will reduce the tax bill.”
Er… so it’s not settled.
A spokesman for Mr Letwin said: “The Tory party has always and will always be a low tax party.
So they are going to cut taxes?
“We will not make any irresponsible promises or do anything which that put the public services or Britain’s finances at risk.”
Or, they’re not.
So that’s clear then. Or not. They want low taxes. Or they don’t. Or they do. In principle. If nobody minds too much. They have made a commitment. Or not. Well, a bit of a commitment. A qualified promise. More of an aspiration really. An idle thought. Just a suggestion. They are going to run it up the flagpole and see if the cat licks it up. But not yet. Soon. Maybe. Possibly not though. Let’s not be too hasty. The Conservatives are muddled. Well, a bit muddled. Not coherent at all. But they expect to be. Sometime. Cannot promise when. Er, what was the question? Can’t we change the subject? Good grief, is that the time? They have just remembered..er, a very important appointment. Must dash.
[My thanks to Melanie Phillips for the links.]
Surely this cannot be for real? I can only imagine that our Chancellor, Gordon Brown, is simply tickled pink by the thought of the Brussels elite choking on their morning brioche. Or perhaps someone has bought him a Seethe-O-Meter for Christmas and he has decided to test it out on the Labour Party rank-and-file?
That may be petty but how else can one explain a senior left-wing politician using the Telegraph to set out his ‘big vision’ for Britain?
Now we must build an even stronger and deeper national consensus: a shared national economic purpose that the Britain of the Industrial Revolution should become the Britain of a 21st-century enterprise renaissance.
And, mirroring America, that new consensus for enterprise should embrace not only commerce, finance and science, but all schools, all social groups and all local authorities. There should be no no-go areas and it should include even the poorest inner-city areas, where enterprise is the best solution to deprivation.
Er, come again?
So I want business to seize the opportunities of the upturn in the world economy. The Pre-Budget Report will lock in the stability that is the foundation for growth, sweep aside old rules and regulations, and set out a plan to lead Europe in fighting Brussels red tape.
‘Nurse, nurse…Mr Brown has had a funny turn!’
But more enterprising as we are, Britain still lags behind the American rate of business creation and success. And as the world economy strengthens, this is the time to encourage more start-ups, to provide more incentives for new investment and to build a deeper, wider British entrepreneurial culture that once again rivals America.
Shhh…Gordon, for pity’s sake, keep your voice down. You’re not supposed to say these things.
Starting a business or becoming self-employed in America is not seen as the privilege of an elite, but a chance open to anyone with talent, initiative and the will to get up and go. And in America, failing is merely an interruption and a lesson learnt, not a cause of ignominy or an excuse for inertia.
Listen? Can you hear it? Yes, it’s the unmistakeable ‘popping’ sound of Guardianista heads exploding. → Continue reading: How? Now? Brown? Wow!
I am reminded of an old, inscrutible Oriental saying: time is a slow but fair judge:
Less than half the population in the European Union’s member states now support the EU project, according to polling results yesterday.
The latest Eurobarometer to be released this week found that just 48 per cent of EU citizens viewed membership as a “good thing”, down from 54 per cent last spring.
Britain was by far the most negative state, with positive feelings tumbling to 28 per cent, but even the French were below half for the first time after months of battles with Brussels over tax cuts and illegal aid to ailing firms.
How long until George Bush scores a higher approval rating among Europeans than Brussels does?
Surely, this time, that clique of tranzi panhandlers and chisellers have overstretched themselves just a bit?
The United Nations has published new predictions on the size and age of the world’s population 300 years from now.
You know what they say, there’s lies, damnable lies and then there’s UN predictions.
It says that if fertility stays at the current level, the global population could rise to 134 trillion.
134 Trillion!!??. Why not add a few more zeros? Go on, really crank it up. Why be so conservative?
The UN publishes long-range projections to help environmental scientists and policy-makers assess implications of dramatic change in world population.
And whine for more funding, of course.
The report says the increase is a clear indication that fertility levels are unsustainable.
Then make war, not love.
Has there ever been any organisation more scurrilous, more fraudulent or more transparently self-serving than that stinking, Augean mess known as the United Nations?
I have long since passed the point of being surprised or shocked at the sheer number of my fellow Britons who labour under the impression that we do not have a constitution in this country.
So many ill-informed Brits seem to think that a constitution is something only the Americans have; an impression which is probably driven home by the fact that they so often hear Americans citing and arguing about their constitution while, here in the UK, such talk dropped off the radar of debate years ago.
But Britain most certainly does have a constitution only it is not codified. Instead it has been constructed piecemeal and painstainkingly over the best part of the last thousand years and it consists partly of laws but also of customs, coventions, traditions and respected arrangements.
Previous generations of political elites worked with and even cherished this delicate web of checks and balances. In many cases this was because they genuinely valued and respected them but, even where that was not the case, they were rightly fearful of the consequences of tampering with them.
No so Nulabour who have taken a box-cutter to these time-honoured institutions and arrangements and traduced them with a missionary zeal that has left our constitution teetering on the brink of oblivion. For the Blairites, these most British of traditions were simply too embarrassingly ‘outmoded’ to be tolerated. Besides they could not let anything so ‘unEuropean’ and arcane get in the way of their high-octane personal ambitions.
But because most Britons were unaware that they even had a constitution (much less did they realise its importance) the Blairites were able to get away with their campaign of vandalism unremarked. Except, that is , among those few of us who knew exactly what they were up to and why they were up to it and were prepared to kick up a stink.
At long last, that stink appears to have reached some august nostrils:
A written constitution may be needed to protect judges and citizens from the Government’s “disturbing” legal changes, according to Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice.
England’s most senior judge said he was no longer sure that our present – unwritten – constitution would provide the necessary protection.
Referring to the Government’s plans to abolish the Lord Chancellor and create a Supreme Court, Lord Woolf said: “The fact that changes of the scale now taking place can be decided upon without legislation… is disturbing. It does suggest that additional constitutional protection may be necessary.”
In the past, said Lord Woolf, he had believed that “our unwritten constitution, supported by conventions and checks and balances, provided all the protection which the judiciary, and therefore the citizen, required to uphold the proper administration of justice”.
The governments proposals to abolish the office of Lord Chancellor and establish a new ‘Supreme Court’ cut right through the heart of the principle of judicial independence and render the justice system as the mere catspaw of the executive. In light of the way that the law has already been so politicised, this does not auger well for the future of Britain as a free country.
However, while the sentiments that Lord Woolf has expressed are admirable and timely, I fear that his proposal for a new codified constitution may be a cure that proves every bit as bad as the disease. Any constitution that is carved out under the current hegemonic ideology is highly likely to greatly resemble the kind of monstrosity that the European Union is currently trying to foist on Europe. In other words, a micro-managerial charter chocked full of faux ‘rights’, costly entitlements and pages of nauseatingly modish claptrap about ‘diversity’ and the ‘environment’. Thanks but no thanks.
So what then must we do? To be honest, I cannot point to any specific remedy. But I do think it would be a good start if we could simply get the message to enough of our fellow citizens that the traditional Anglo-Saxon common law freedoms they take for granted are in mortal danger and that they are sleepwalking into a state of despotism.
It has been tantalising everyone for so long now. Were they? Weren’t they?
The little signs were all there. The furtive glances, the blushes, the games of footsie under the table, the electric crackle whenever they were in the room together and those oh-so-subtle gestures of intimacy when in public that were so charged with romantic frisson.
Were they even aware that polite society was awash with all manner of fanciful and delicious gossip about their dalliances? Nobody was fooled by their calm exteriors. Everyone knew. Did they think they could hide their irresistably mutual animal magnetism behind their coquettish games for ever?
Of course not. So now they have done the decent thing and formally announced their engagement. Socialism and Islamism are now, officially, an item:
The Muslim Commissariat in Moscow oversaw Russia’s policy towards Islam. Muslims with few communist credentials were granted leading positions in the commissariat. The effect was to split the Islamic movement. Historians agree that a majority of Muslim leaders supported the soviets, convinced that Soviet power meant religious liberty. There was serious discussion among Muslims of the similarity of Islamic values to socialist principles. Popular slogans of the time included: ‘Long live Soviet power, long live the sharia!’; ‘Religion, freedom and national independence!’ Supporters of ‘Islamic socialism’ appealed to Muslims to set up soviets.
The Bolsheviks made alliances with the Kazakh pan-Islamic group the Ush-Zhuz (which joined the CP in 1920), the Persian pan-Islamist guerrillas in the Jengelis, and the Vaisites, a Sufi brotherhood. In Dagestan, Soviet power was established largely thanks to the partisans of the Muslim leader Ali-Hadji Akushinskii.
The assault on Islam marked the beginning of a sharp break with the socialist policies of October 1917. As the Soviet Union launched a programme of forced industrialisation, Muslim national and religious leaders were physically eliminated and Islam was driven underground. The dream of religious freedom was buried in the Great Terror of the 1930s.
Socialist Review stands in a tradition that totally rejects the Stalinist approach to Islam. But in the early years of the revolution the Bolsheviks were successful at winning Muslims to fight for socialism. We can learn from and be inspired by their achievements.
They are going to make such an adorable couple.
[Link courtesy of Harry Hatchett who also has some pointed observations.]
The time of year has arrived for the annual Turner Prize for modern art: an exhibition of dreary, talentless, post-modernist rubbish fawned over and slobbered upon by a carnival procession of dreary, talentless, post-modernist critics, groupies, poseurs and assorted hangers-on (lots of ‘dog-turd-in-a-bottle’ type installations, hailed as a ‘devastating social critique’).
I don’t care who won it or why but I could not possibly let this scandalously hypocritical bit of dreck pass by without comment:
Described by some critics as “a deeply weird artist”, Perry makes classically shaped pots, which now fetch between £8,000 and £15,000.
But his decorative motifs – transfers, photographs and squiggly drawings – are anything but traditional. Inspired mostly by what he calls his unhappy childhood in Essex after his father left home, many are scenes of child abuse or erotica or angry social comment on class or the consumer culture.
Obviously the ‘deeply weird’ Mr Perry is so angry about ‘consumer culture’ that he could not possibly let one of his home-made pots go for less than 8000 smackers!
If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear a flower in your hair:
The Green Party is expected to take control of San Francisco tomorrow and reclaim the city’s hippy heritage with a campaign that has relied on mass yoga rallies and poetry readings to overturn 40 years of Democrat rule.
Victory in the mayoral election would provide the party with its first senior official in the United States and the result would confirm San Francisco’s status as America’s most politically radical city.
Yoga? Poetry readings? So that’s how to beat the Democrats!
Among his policies are vast investment in cheap housing and the raising of the minimum wage to the highest in the country.
Assuming, of course, that any Green Party supporters actually have any intention of working for a living.
If he wins he has promised to make the city a “laboratory” for the party’s policies.
And where have we heard that one before?
At his campaign offices supporters with Mohawk haircuts mingle with those with facial piercings. Or as self-styled “free-flowing” poet Dave Whitaker, who says he once got Bob Dylan stoned, put it: the campaign’s success has been simply “karmic”.
That place sounds like a white-hot furnace of cutting-edge political and economic analysis.
“Cast a wide net. Find the common thread. Let life flourish. Then, don’t panic. Think organic. It’s a race between history and hip-story.”
Yup, works for me.
As Brian Micklethwait recently observed:
When a government starts to slide seriously into the dustbin of history, the very things which it tries to do to halt the slide become part of the slide.
He was referring to Her Majesty’s Government’s rather comical attempt to shore up its plummeting popularity by launching a ‘Big Conversation’ and, for it is worth, I think he is right.
But does this formula have wider applications? If the answer to that question is ‘yes’ then perhaps it can be applied to the democratic process itself:
A public debate on lowering the voting age from 18 to 16 has been called for by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer.
A lower voting age would encourage more young people to become involved in politics, he told the Observer paper.
The Electoral Commission, which advises ministers on how elections can be modernised, began consulting on the voting age in the summer following concern over falling turnouts among young voters.
I can entirely understand why the idea of lowering the voting age to 16 (at present it is 18) should have a certain appeal among the political classes. By every standard that can actually be measured, democratic politics is in steady decline. The membership roles of all main political parties are now so low that corporate donations are the only thing saving them from bankruptcy and voter turnout in elections is dropping year on year.
It is probably to early to pronounce that democracy is in crisis. It is not. Well, not yet. But there is now a sufficiently large block of public indifference to send a shudder down the spines of not just politicians but also the professional classes whose wealth and status is entirely dependent on state activism.
The threat of a creeping but inexorable loss of legitimacy has prompted calls for ‘something to be done’. In the past few years there has been much chundering about making voting complusory. But the trouble with that is that it may, overnight, turn a large block of public indifference into a large block of civil disobedience and that will only make things worse. So, extending the franchise is probably their safest bet.
I am against it, of course. People of all ages tend to vote for three things: more government, more entitlements and more laws. There is no reason to suppose that younger voters will somehow buck this trend. Nor is this merely my customarily gloomy nature at work, it is an analysis borne out by history. From the 19th Century onwards the growth of the welfare/regulatory state has steadily tacked upwards on the same line that marks the growth of enfranchisement. Since governments must respond to the wishes and aspirations of those that elect them, the former will tend to follow the latter.
But if the voting age is going to be lowered then it will be lowered regardless of whether I approve or not. The real question is whether is will achieve its stated aims. Supporters of the lower voting age are hoping that giving 16 year-olds ther right to vote will enable them to express themselves, ignite their imaginations and re-quicken the democratic process.
Well, who knows? Maybe that will be the case. But it seems to me that the opposite effect is just as likely. Namely, that the steps taken to reverse the slide of democratic legitimacy just become a part of that slide as the teenyvoters stay away in droves, thus converting a nagging concern into a slough of despond.
And where do we go from there? Good question.
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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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