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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Labour and its fixation on Net Zero must also take responsibility for the pending death of British Steel. It was Labour, in 2023, that promised to invest in ‘all available clean-steel technologies… innovations to make the UK a world leader in clean steel’. In the same press release, then leader of the opposition Keir Starmer committed to ‘greening the steel that will make the solar panels and wind turbines built to power our homes for years to come’. This was thoroughly delusional. Not only are solar panels and wind turbines not the answer to our energy needs, but there also aren’t even any British factories making solar panels at present.
Similarly, it was Jonathan Reynolds, in February this year, who claimed that decarbonising steel ‘will never mean deindustrialisation’, boasting of Britain’s ‘world-leading research and development capabilities’ in the sector. But this isn’t true. Between 2021 and 2023, Tata, a leading investor in steel research and development, spent just £11million annually on ‘green steel’ research. It will take many more millions (and many more years) for decarbonisation to ever result in anything but deindustrialisation.
– James Woudhuysen
My only objection to this article is it should read “The Labour and Tory fixation on Net Zero must also take responsibility…”
The first lockdown in the UK did not technically have legal force until three days after Johnson’s address. But that didn’t stop police going after people almost immediately. This may sound like a trivial oversight, but it does underscore the authoritarian nature of how lockdown rules were made and imposed. For a brief period at least, police were arresting people on the basis not of laws passed democratically in parliament, but on the mere words of the prime minister, merely because they had been uttered in a television broadcast. This really did bring Britain into ‘police state’ territory.
– Fraser Myers
Defining the benefit of spending as who gets the money rather than what gets bought is economic insanity. We might have a little insight there as to why government control of the economy ends up impoverishing.
– Tim Worstall
Blog is getting hit hard with spam so the anti-spam defences have become a bit less discriminating. If your comment fails to appear, it might be because we think you are a blogroach, but far more likely it’s the algorithm taking umbrage rather than us.
Carney is living, breathing proof that expert credentials are no substitute for sound judgement or political acumen. He has embraced just about every naff and dangerous political trend of our times, never deviating from the Davos script.
Most notoriously, as governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, Carney became the high priest of Project Fear ahead of the 2016 Brexit vote. He warned before the referendum that a Leave vote would spark an instant recession. It didn’t. He claimed Brexit would make investment in British assets so risky that it could ‘test the kindness of strangers’ should the UK take the leap. Needless to say, this was politically motivated hysteria, not a sober assessment of Britain’s economic prospects outside the EU.
More recently, his endorsement of Labour’s Rachel Reeves as chancellor ahead of the UK General Election also smacked of both dubious judgement and needless political interference. Carney said in autumn 2023 that it was ‘beyond time’ her plans were put into action. Yet since Reeves’s plans were actually put into action, in her first budget in October last year, the UK economy has teetered on the brink of recession, unemployment has risen and government borrowing costs have shot up. Call it the Carney kiss of death.
– Fraser Myers
Lord Gavin Barwell was the Chief of Staff for Theresa May – in a field with numerous candidates, probably the worst British Prime Minister in living memory. Reacting to a recent Daily Sceptic article that laid out the science surrounding carbon dioxide, he pounced on an X repost by “Toby and his mate [yours truly]” and stated: “I suspect the next generation may pursue people like him who sought to delay action for damages.” Barwell’s comment is as silly as it is sinister, but it indicates considerable elite derangement as members observe their Net Zero fantasy falling in flames. Net Zero was only ever an elite luxury belief backed by 30 years of lies, fake science and constant climate scare forecasts that never happened. Removing all hydrocarbons from industrial societies will lead to economic and societal collapse. Removing hydrocarbons from the developing world is just plain wicked.
– Chris Morrison
The prosecution of speech crimes will erode public trust in the police and is taking us to anarcho-tyranny: the police will come after easy targets, and leave persistent criminals to run rampant. There is no British equivalent to the “thin blue line” movement in the United States, a segment of the population which will support the police come what may, and they may find themselves without a dependable public support base. While it is for politicians to repeal the laws which have killed free speech in Britain, the police must do their part too to revive Robert Peel’s founding principles and protect the safety, order and indeed liberties of the British people, instead of enforcing the political creed of multiculturalism over freedom, as many do today.
– Fred de Fossard
Competition has utterly transformed telecommunications after the state Post Office monopoly was ended. The same happened with deliveries when Amazon came along with an innovative service. Uber and Airbnb have each transformed their markets.
That is how competition works. It is Schumpeter’s creative destruction. Like evolution, it works by a selective death rate. It is not who owns the production, it is how easy it is for potential competitors to gain access to the market. Growth, productivity and innovation are driven by competition. Producers vie to satisfy the consumers, and those who do so survive, for a time, over those who do not.
One thing that competition ensures is change. It leads to a dynamic economy, just as its absence leads to a static one.
– Madsen Pirie
The only way that the proponents of the ‘liberal’ international order are able to process such criticism is to cast it as an expression of manifestly unreasonable character flaws. Ironically, then, angry Eurocrat Guy Verhofstadt took to X to proclaim that “America, as a liberal empire, is no more”, and that the “new era of US governance” is an “oligarchy”, “where billionaire members of Mar-a-Lago decide US policy”. But talk is cheap. Trump is obnoxious to the “liberal” order imagined by Verhofstadt, not because his administration is an “oligarchy”, but because it is a democratic departure from the green oligarchies that dominate in Europe and were installed without due process under the largesse of Green Blob billionaires.
– Ben Pile
This Friday, January 24th, the UK Parliament is due to vote on a Private Member’s Bill that could lead to mass starvation, widespread disease and fatalities and the almost certain collapse of civil liberties and society within a few years. The bill has the support of a third of voting MPs and there is a clear and present danger that it could pass. Many MPs depart for their constituencies on a Friday and 200 remaining zealots could have a chance to swing a vote their way. The bill is a thinly-disguised attempt using meaningless climate and nature crisis verbosity to ration and control almost everything that citizens consume. The obvious attack on civil liberties should serve as a warning to other countries to stand against the Net Zero hysterics that have infiltrated large sections of elite British society.
– Chris Morrison
So, to summarize: it turns out that the “deceivers” were never the energy companies to begin with. Rather, New York City attempted to deceive the legal system by taking information out of context in order to name and shame American energy companies. While unfortunate, this activity isn’t surprising considering the City’s law firm, Sher Edling, is currently under Congressional investigation for its dark money financing and questionable ties to activist-academics.
– Mandi Risko
…it’s now illegal to build reasonable sized houses on a decent garden. Minimum density rules mean you just can’t. What was considered a “Home for Heroes” in the 1920s is illegal to build in the 2020s. Sorry, but that really is it.
– Tim Worstall
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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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