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.
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James Bartholomew, author of ‘The Welfare State We’re In’, agreed to face a panel of unsympathetic critics in a debate held at the London School of Economics and arranged by BBC Radio 4. Whether the structure of this debate met the guidelines for impartiality laid down by the BBC is a moot point, but James Bartholomew conveyed the major points of his argument, despite interruptions from the panel and the chair that truncated the majority of his argument.
Nicholas Barr is Professor of Public Economics at the European Institute, LSE and author of The Economics of the Welfare State. Edward Davey MP, Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Education, MP for Kingston and Surbiton and a contributor to the recent Orange Book – Reclaiming Liberalism. Niall Dickson, formerly Social Affairs Editor for the BBC, is now Chief Executive of the King’s Fund. Professor Pat Thane is director of the Centre for Contemporary British History, and author of The Foundations of the Welfare State.
None of the panel disagreed strongly with the facts presented by James Bartholomew. It was clear that disagreement stemmed from two fundamentally different worldviews rather than disputing the contemporary effects of the welfare state. Whereas some consider functional illiteracy of 20% to be an indictment of state education and a sufficient reason for its abolition, the panel viewed this failure as room for improvement. Without making the trite comparison of managerialism versus morality, the effect of politics as the art of the possible on individual lives was made very clear.
The poor may have suffered from insecurity concerning health care before the welfare state came into existence. However, if they felt fear over paying for their treatment, this has been replaced by the fear that they may not be treated at all due to healthcare rationing or professional triage. During his talk, James Bartholomew echoed Perry de Havilland and told the audience that the state is not your friend. He showed the blight that the welfare state has wrought on the lives of many individuals and stated that there were no panaceas which could reverse the social and cultural damage.
More thoughts from the speaker can be found here.
Mr Drucker says that modern government can do only two things well: wage war and inflate the currency. It’s the aim of my administration to prove Mr Drucker wrong.
– Richard Nixon
The European Union wishes to legalise the retention of data from telecoms operators and ISPs for the period of one year. We are told that the retention of data will allow governments to conduct counter-terrorist campaigns more successfully and prevent other serious crimes. The retained data could be used in these investigations.
The Creative and Media Business Alliance have lobbied the European Parliament to extend the provisions of the proposed Directive. Data would be used for investigations into copyright infringement and, if other new laws come to pass, infringements of intellectual property.
But the Creative and Media Business Alliance (CMBA), a group of media companies including EMI, SonyBMG and TimeWarner, has lobbied the EU to allow this data to be used to investigate all crimes, not just serious offences such as terrorism.
Opponents have claimed that if this demand was granted, then — combined with the upcoming IPRED2 legislation which could create Europe-wide criminal offences for intellectual property infringement — the entertainment industry would be able to pursue prosecutions against suspected copyright-infringers through the criminal court entirely at the cost of the taxpayer.
Whilst intellectual property is always a tricky and contested subject, the music media is treading that famous path of fighting disruptive technology by lobbying for a secure monopoly. Only Europe is stupid enough to let them.
One of the concerns appearing on the radar is the impact of a flu pandemic upon Africa, where a rudimentary infrastructure for health is combined with the largest number of individuals with HIV and AIDs. A common mistake is to view this latter group as the most vulnerable to a flu pandemic, with a potentially catastrophic death rate.
Recent comments by Dr. Robert Webster, at an avian-influenza conference, organised by the Council for Foreign Relations, in New York, theorised that HIV positive patients and those suffering from cancer could act as incubators for the virus, leading to more virulent strains. However, there is evidence to support the view that immunologically compromised individuals will not facilitate the spread of the pandemic:
Stephen Wolinsky, chief of the infectious diseases division at the Feinberg School of Medicine, concurred that prolonged shedding of the virus was a definite problem but referred to a study published earlier this week that stated that immunodeficiency may in fact be a benefit in the face of avian influenza.
The study, published in the journal Respiratory Research, indicated that the young and healthy may be those most seriously affected by avian influenza, as the body’s immuno-response was to produce a storm of cytokines that can lead to respiratory difficulties.
Wolinsky opined that, for Africa, the lack of access to doctors and hospitals may prove to be a greater concern in the fight against avian influenza than the continent’s HIV/AIDS epidemic.
This region has been identified as a potential outbreak region for the pandemic. Farming practices that bring farmers into close proximity with poultry, are compounded by non-existent public health schemes and a large proportion of the population suffering from ill-health and malnutrition.
The H5N1 virus overstimulates the immune system, and many of its powerful effects are caused by what medical expert call a “cytokine storm”, after the immune molecules excited by the disease.
It was the cytokine storm that overwhelmed so many victims of the 1918 flu pandemic. Aids patients may be spared that fate.
But equally possible, with their immune defences down, they could succumb easily to the disease.
“In that situation,” said Laurie Garrett, “vast populations of HIV positive people could be obliterated by the pandemic flu.”
Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council of Foreign Relations, was identifying the worst case scenario.
Just browsing in my local newsagents brought me face to face with the burning cars that coloured the covers of Time, Newsweek, and other current affairs magazines. A quick flick through left me cold except for one quote (unfortunately unsourced) that made sense.
An Italian analyst argued that riots were far less likely to occur in Italy as the country was too corrupt and everyone was working in the black economy. Whereas the French state prevented immigrants from making any money at all and destroyed their aspirations, Italian graft was far more amenable to the hard graft of immigrants.
Stella Rimington, the Judi Dench of the twilight world, has acted as a conduit for intel’s view on ID cards. They will not work.
Asked at a further education conference whether she thought ID cards would make the country safer, Dame Stella Rimington replied: “No is the very simple answer, although ID cards have possibly some purpose.
“But I don’t think anybody in the intelligence services – not in my former service – will be pressing for ID cards.”
On the same day, Sir Ian Blair gave the Dimblebore Lecture, trying to disguise his support for a single police force a la NuLab, behind honeyed words of opening debate and acquiring responsibility.
First, we want a single police service, not a multiplicity of them. By, that I do not necessarily mean a single national police force but one holistic service to cover the whole of the mission.
Despite calling for a debate which involved the public, Blair betrayed his liberal-left roots, praising the welfare state (namechecking Beveridge) and decrying local constabularies as islands of lower middle class conservatism. He painted a bleak picture of high crime, violence and anti-social behaviour that required the police to act as the moral arbiters of society, All as part of the debate. The conclusion boils down to “We have lost your respect, That is your fault and you must do something about it by having a debate led by us.”
Sir Ian Blair’s support for Labour’s policies of a national police force, obscured by totems of accountability and transparency, ran through this speech. Perhaps he genuinely welcomes a debate, but only if the conclusions are correct. The invocation of the 7th July as ‘the event’ around which all police work should be organised was another hint at the paramilitary policing which would provide moral comfort to state defined communities. ID cards never got a look-in just to avoid the appearance of bias.
You see, the British never really got to grips with policing because the lack of a written constitution demonstrates our lack of forethought in these and, no doubt, so many other matters:
And here I come to the second question, which is ‘who is to decide?’ and I return to my story about running back that far.
Despite my whole professional lifetime in policing, I believe it should be you, not me, who decides what kind of police we want. I’ll return to the third question – about how – later on.
For nearly two centuries, the British have not considered any of these questions very thoroughly. That is fairly typical.
We are one of the few countries in the world without a written constitution.
We have none of the exact distinctions between the executive and the legislature of the United States or between the roles of central and local government in France; we operate through gradual compromise and evolution.
But, even in that context, the police have a disadvantage.
We have been a service which has always been separate and silent, which successive governments – until recently – and all of you, your parents and your grandparents, have broadly left alone to get on with the job that you have given it.
Two answers: remove gun control and elect chief constables for each county or borough. Easy, isn’t it!
If I were a member of the alienated army that shared Guy Fawkes night with the French on November 5th, as part of their general celebration and indulgence, wouldn’t cars present an opportunity to joyride? How clear that these hotheads, raised in a political culture of entitlement and spectacle, now turn against their patron and paymaster. Schools, buses, hospitals and cars are destroyed to preserve their imprisonment and immobility. As masters of their estates, the rioters cock their legs and piss molotovs to provide the reek of burnt plastic that serves as their territorial marker.
The puzzled onlooker will wonder why it took a damp November rather than a hot July or August. Everyone gets more attention during the busy autumn when some of the French population deigns to work for a living. Now the lighthouses of punditry highlight hubris expunged from the once proud Gallic rooster and the smart riots of the European intifada. Some may fly the flag of Eurabia as their singular explanation for this tinderbox.
Yet the answers lie in crappy suburbs where the height of social mobility is raking money as a drugs and dole prole. The state is an absent employer, white, French and a danger to profits. Where economics provides motive to keep out the state as a threat to the monopoly of drugs and Islam, politics and terror will probably follow.
I have always had a soft spot for Wigan Athletic. Ever since they entered the former Fourth Division in 1978, they have struck me as plucky underdogs in football and in their home town. Association football in Wigan holds the same status as rugby union in Australia, I suspect.
Now, the Latics, under the inspired leadership of their manager, Paul Jewell, sit just under the superstars of the English Premiership. If they maintain the successful record that recently gained Jewell Manager of the Month for September, this team might be in the running for a spot in the Champions League. Such a success would confirm that the pyramid structure of the English leagues, helped by financial patronage, is not entirely dead.
However, Wigan tended to fade in the latter part of the season when they played in the First Division and, odds on, this will happen in the next few months. Still, let their fans dream of UEFA for this year, if nothing else.
Eurostat has concluded that sixteen percent of the population resides in poverty. At a first reading this appeared quite a high figure, perhaps mitigated by the enlargement process in 2004. On closer examination, this statistical sleight of hand concerned the level of social inequality in each Member State. Poverty was measured as that proportion of the population who had less than 60% of the country’s median disposable income. Hence, these startling results:
Using a set of micro-data and cross-sectional indicators from national sources, Eurostat determined the percentage of people living in households that have less than 60% of the country’s median disposable income to live on. Surprisingly, this indicator for social inclusion is best in some poorer countries, such as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia. The Czech Republic’s leadership shows that recent policy plays a greater role in combating poverty than a country’s historical background. Slovakia, which was part of the same country as the Czech part of the former Czech Republic for more than sixty years until 1993, has the worst indicators eleven years after Czechoslovakia split.
And is there a greater absurdity than this?
Being poor does not mean the same throughout the European Union. While a four-person family with an annual purchasing power of 30,000 euro in Luxembourg is already threatened by poverty, a family with 5,000 euro a year in Lithuania or Latvia is just above the poverty line.
Good News. A new study, to be published in Environmental Science and Technology in November, has concluded that the manufacturing of specified nanomaterials such as buckyballs and quantum dots is safer than oil refining or making wine. This was based upon an actuarial model that Zurich based XL insurance have developed to assess risks in existing manufacturing processes. Using the model allowed an assessment of the ‘environmental footprint’ of potential nanomaterial manufacturing.
Using a method for assessing the premiums that companies pay for insurance, a team of scientists and insurance experts have concluded that the manufacturing processes for five, near-market nanomaterials — including quantum dots, carbon nanotubes and buckyballs — present fewer risks to the environment than some common industrial processes like oil refining. For two of the nanomaterials – nanotubes and alumoxane nanoparticles — manufacturing risks were comparable with those of making wine or aspirin.
This study does not provide assurances that there may be unknown risks with these nanomaterials.
In developing their risk assessments, the research team developed a detailed account of the input materials, output materials and waste streams for each process. Risk was qualitatively assessed for each process, based on factors including toxicity, flammability and persistence in the environment…
Mark Weisner, one of the co-authors of the study, concluded that,
“We can’t anticipate all of the details of how nanomaterials fabrication will evolve, but based on what we do know, the fabrication of the nanomaterials we considered appears to present lower risks than current industrial activities like petrochemical refining, polyethylene production and synthetic pharmaceutical production”
Let us remind ourselves of Greenpeace’s objective for nanotechnology – reseach directed towards their own chosen goals through government expenditure and a moratorium until the precautionary principle is satisfied.
Greenpeace believes that there may be some advantages in developments in some nanotechnologies. However, we are concerned that any value could be lost if the development processes governing nanotechnology does not prioritise environmental, public health and social goals, and is not sensitive to the needs and concerns of the public at an early stage. Indeed some nanotechnologies could become a real problem. At this stage it is too early to say what the specific problems or advantages might be – but the way nanotechnology develops will have a huge influence on whether the outcomes are good or bad.
We want to see a moratorium on the release of nanoparticles to the environment until evidence that it is safe (for the environment and human health) is clear. In the longer term nanotechnology could produce self-replicating ‘machines’ whose proliferation could be environmentally problematic.
The moratorium may sound innocuous until one realises that the standard of proof required by Greenpeace is never weighed against the potential benefits or lives saved with the earlier deployment of these technologies. The danger is that the tautology of social goals, governmental ownership and control of these technologies for the public good (as defined by Greenpeace), could hinder real progress such as private sector efforts to build the space elevator.
The possible tenth planet, 2003 UB313, which takes 540 years to circle the sun, in a highly eccentric orbit, has now acquired a satellite. The new moon was discovered two months after 2003 UB313 by the Keck observatory on September 10th and the findings will be published tomorrow. The existence of a moon ensures that Xena will be seriously considered as a tenth planet, since it has the mass to acquire orbiting bodies.
“Since the day we discovered Xena, the big question has been whether or not it has a moon,” Michael Brown, of the California Institute of Technology, said in a statement. “Having a moon is just inherently cool — and it is something that most self-respecting planets have, so it is good to see that this one does too.”
The possible 10th planet moves in a highly eccentric orbit, tilted some 45 degrees above the orbital plane of the other planets. Its orbit is also elliptical, zooming in as close as 3.5 billion miles from the sun and moving out to as far as 9 billion miles away.
And, as you know, the self-respecting companion of Xena, could only have been called Gabrielle.
If Nazi Germany was fascism by radio, New Labour is the corporate state by television.
Colin MacCabe, writing in the Observer, on why he has left the Labour Party.
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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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