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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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The current Guido Fawkes Quote of the Day features Andrew Neil saying, in yesterday’s Observer, how very hated the ridiculous Derek Draper (a particular Guido aversion) seems to have become, amongst the sort of people who think it worth sharing their hatreds of public figures with the likes of Andrew Neil.
But I found more interesting what Neil says about The Boat That Rocked, the new Richard Curtis movie about the pirate radio stations of old:
The pirate stations were not killed off by a Tory public-school prime minister (as in the film), but by a grammar school boy and Labour PM, Harold Wilson, and the destruction was not carried out by a Tory toff minister (as in the Curtis version), but by a left-wing toff, Tony Benn (then Labour minister in charge of the airwaves).
Yes, that’s certainly how I remember the story.
. . . the pirate stations were shut not by a stuffy Tory establishment, but by a supposedly modernising Labour government. Fact really is stranger than fiction.
I don’t think that strange, any more than I think that the lies built into Curtis’s plot are strange. “Modernising Labour governments” think that they know best how to do modernity, and are a standing menace to the real thing. Having ruined whichever bit of modernity they were obsessing about, they and their supporters then lie about that, blaming – for as long as they plausibly can – capitalism.
See also: the USSR. That was run by people who were absolutely obsessed with modernity, which they thought they could improve upon by dictatorial means. With the result that they stopped pretty much all of it dead in its tracks, apart from the stuff like concentration camps. And for decades, people like Richard Curtis told lies about that too.
I came across this fine tribute website to John D. MacDonald, the writer of many crime/mystery novels, most of which were set in the area around Florida, the Bahamas and Caribbean. If you have not come across his writings, which are a sort of mixture of Lee Child, with a twist of Raymond Chandler, a shot of Ian Fleming, a light coating of Eric Ambler and a tincture of Robert Parker, then you should correct that oversight. One thing I love about these old 1950s and 1960s novels is the artwork on the covers. I love those “pulp” covers with pictures of hot dames, tough private eyes, guns, boats, gambling cards with smudges of coffee or whiskey on them. There is a whole genre of design and artwork that went into making these covers that deserves more credit than it usually gets.
Even today, the MacDonald books, especially his Travis McGee stories, which later got a hilarious echo in the crime capers – also set in southern Florida – of Karl Hiaasen – read as freshly and sharply today as when they were first written. Reading them makes me want to jump on a plane and head on down south for a spot of marlin fishing off the Keys. Bliss.
I am not exactly a great fan of Richard Curtis’ films – here is a hilarious spoof of the film, Notting Hill – but this looks like a bit of fun to watch. Radio Caroline, the radio station that was based on an old lightship vessel off the Suffolk/Essex coast in the 1960s, embodied that glorious, British two-fingered gesture at overweening authority that, when allied to a bit of entrepreneurial dash, often explains the rise of many a business sector. It is hard to believe that in a world where radio was dominated by the BBC, that listeners to rock and pop music of the time had to resort to listening to stuff broadcast by a bunch of sea-sick DJs on a boat. Radio Caroline, alas, closed in 1967 when the BBC unveiled what was to become its Radio 1 station. On the television last night, the-then government minister who presided over the old monopoly, the “national treasure”, Tony Benn, claimed that shutting the station was necessary since the buccaneering RC station was “messy”. It is an example of the Soviet mindset that lurks beneath the infantile grin of that old man.
There are obvious parallels with the current assault on the citadels of the MSM by Internet-based writers and broadcasters. As Patri Friedman, grandson of the great Milton Friedman, prepares to head out East to tell us all about seasteading, the story of how a group of DJs briefly enlivened the airwaves via the North Sea is very timely.
Meanwhile, on the whole subject of radio and the rebellion against state-backed monopolists like the BBC, here is a good American perspective from Reason magazine’s Jesse Walker. Recommended.
I do not like all of Will Farrell’s movies. But this one, about a nutty US TV anchorman, is wonderful. I wonder if any actual broadcasters have ever dreamed of doing this? I bet Jeremy Paxman has.
I guess this is an issue that will not register much outside of this little damp island of the UK, but there has been a small media flurry of interest over the amazing quiz-answering skills of a young woman, Gail Trimble, on the BBC show University Challenge. She has had the outrageous nerve of being very good at answering the questions, and worse, she smiles a bit on camera when she gets the answer correct – which is most of the time. For this, she has been variously attacked for being “smug” etc. It makes me wonder why those who are offended by signs of intelligence bother to watch the programme in the first place. Surely fare such as Celebrity Big Brother might be more their style. They are welcome to it.
As humans, we surely have evolved as creatures to feel pride and happiness in accomplishment. The first human probably grinned when he figured out how to shape the perfect flint arrowhead. Pride, and showing happiness at cracking a problem, overcoming an obstacle or winning a prize is not just right, it is natural to any person of healthy self respect. Pride is the reward one gets for achieving something of value. Smugness or arrogance are unfair charges to make in this sense. Of course, there is a lot more to life than being able to store lots of facts and figures in one’s head and answer correctly to a bumptious quizmaster such as Jeremy Paxman, but I find the attacks on this pleasant young lady to suggest a lack of comfort with intellectual accomplishment that is rampant in parts of our culture. In fact, those who wished that the lady could look stony-faced or even miserable are showing a level of aggression, even hatred, for accomplishment. And that I think speaks to a neurotic condition that the abusers of this woman might like to reflect on.
And then again, I will openly confess to having a weakness for brunettes with brains and a cultivated voice. I see the young lady has a few male admirers on the web. Good for her.
The movie “Pride and Predator” has just gone into production. And yes, the plot is exactly what you think it is.
This is on my Amazon wish-list. I love the mad, over-the-top style of the late Terry Thomas and from a young age, was delighted by his crazy turns of phrase, his hilarious demeanor and wonderful portrayal of the upper class cad. I must say that every time I am unfortunate enough to see Gordon Brown, The Community Organiser or Sarkozy on the television, it is hard not to shout out in true TT style: “What an absolute shower!”
Where did the expression “absolute shower” come from, by the way?
Taking a break from the financial tsunami and idiotic politicians, here are some wonderful infra-red photos. (Via David Thompson).
The UK’s National Gallery – a state-backed institution – and galleries in Scotland have secured £50 million to pay to keep a Titian painting “for the nation”, using state – taxpayer’s money – for this purpose. A Scottish Labour MP has criticised the use of taxpayers’ funds on this painting, arguing that such money would be better spent on supporting arts eduction for school children instead. The story is here. Naturally, the idea that a work of art that has been loaned by its owner is private property and should not be thought of as a something that belongs to “the nation” is not addressed in the article I link to, since that is outside the intellectual frame of reference either of the arts bureaucrats who spend this public money, or indeed the Labour MP who criticises them.
Leave aside the hopefully temporary problems posed by the credit crunch. For the past decade or so, there has been a huge amount of money swirling around among the rich and even not-so-rich to be spent on the arts. There is no need, in my view, for a penny of taxpayer’s money to be spent on the arts. Leave aside whether you love or loathe the things that public funds are used to support: the point is that these things should not be receiving tax-raised funds at all. Let the rich of today patronise what budding Titians, Raphaels or Turners that might be out there.
I occasionally will read a big novel, such as a “classic”, because I think that it is a mark of a reasonably intelligent person to be on nodding terms with some of the high points of our literature, although I often wimp out and pick up an old R. A. Heinlein or the latest John Varley science fiction novel instead. But I certainly do accept that there is nothing more tedious than plodding through acres of text as if it were somehow proof of moral virtue or literary stamina. Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a bit like climbing the North face of the Eiger – more of an effort than I think it worthwhile making right now. And James Delingpole thinks the same. His article on the late John Updike is caustic, if not disrespectful.
One of my favourite actors, star of the great series, The Prisoner, has died. Here’s a great appreciation of that cult 60s television series by the late Chris R. Tame. It goes without saying that the message of that series – the dangers of an all-encompassing state – are more relevant now than ever.
Patrick McGoohan, rest in peace.
This guy clearly is not impressed by the recent Hollywood film about ‘Che’ Guevara, which I will not be watching:
I wish that Mr. Soderbergh and Mr. Del Toro could live in Cuba, not as the pampered VIPs that they are when they visit today, but as Cubans do, with no United States Constitutional rights, with ration cards entitling them to tiny portions of provisions that the stores don’t even stock anyway, with chivatos surveilling them constantly. How long would it be before Mr. Soderbergh started sizing up inner tubes, speculating on the durability and buoyancy of them, asking himself, could I make the crossing on that? How long before Mr. Del Toro started gazing soulfully at divorced or widowed tourist women, hoping to seduce and marry one of them and get out? Only then could they see why this insipid, frivolous and pretentious movie they have made is nothing less than an insult to millions of people, who really do live like that, and who’ve lived like that their entire lives.
The quote was seen at the blog of David Thompson.
I have said it before and I will repeat: for all its possible charms, I am not setting foot in Cuba until it becomes a haven of capitalist decadence. Not a minute before. Even if that means paying more for cigars and the booze.
Here is a film about Cuba, starring Andy Garcia, which is much more worthwhile.
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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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