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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Before it’s possible to suggest a solution to a problem, it’s necessary to grasp the root cause of the problem itself. A sort of Reverse Chesterton’s Fence exercise.
So, what has gone wrong? As we never tire of repeating it’s the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. That is, for the past 78 years we’ve had that coherent national plan. With a long term vision. Run by the Rolls Royce minds of the Men in Whitehall who know best. Which is how we’ve ended up with the output we’ve got, something that would disgrace a Trabant factory.
As it is national control of planning – the TCPA really does define who may build what where, is the nationalisation of land use – that is the problem then the solution is to get rid of what caused the problem. Blow up the TCPA, proper blow up – kablooie.
– Tim Worstall
The Press Gazette reports:
Essex Police loses accuracy complaint versus Telegraph over Allison Pearson questioning
Essex Police has had a complaint against The Telegraph rejected by IPSO following a visit to columnist Allison Pearson by two uniformed officers on Remembrance Sunday.
Pearson was visited by police in November 2024, apparently to discuss a potentially inflammatory post on X by the comment writer.
(The tweet in question criticised two-tier policing of Pro-Palestine marches.)
Pearson said she was accused of a “non-crime hate incident” by police. The Telegraph also reported that she was questioned over an “alleged hate crime”.
Essex Police said Pearson was wrong to claim officers described the matter as a “non-crime hate incident” and provided a transcript of video taken filmed by officers at the time. IPSO rejected the complaints, saying the Telegraph had taken sufficient care to establish the facts ahead of publication.
Why does it matter whether it was or was not a “non-crime hate incident”? Because Essex Police tried to claim that because Pearson was – ludicrously – being investigated for an actual crime (someone had complained that the tweet had incited racial hatred), that meant that the Telegraph could not report on their own columnist having the rozzers turn up unannounced at her door on Remembrance Sunday.
Rejecting the complaint, IPSO said: “While the complainant had said that it had not been given sufficient time to respond to this email, it had responded within four hours, with both a for-publication comment and a not-for-publication note. Neither the comment nor the background note responded to the claim that the writer had been told that she had been ‘told she had been reported for a non crime hate incident’. While both pieces of correspondence made clear that the police were investigating the matter as a potential criminal offence, the position regarding what the writer had been told during the visit had not been disputed or corrected.”
IPSO added: ” The complainant had said that the articles should not have been published, as the publication was not aware of the full circumstances of the case, and had attempted to dissuade the newspaper from publishing the articles under complaint. The committee noted that, on occasion, the press will report on ongoing investigations, and the code does not forbid it from doing so. It further noted the role that the press plays in reporting on the criminal justice system, and that – provided that the code is not breached – there is no bar on the media reporting on ongoing and developing cases, and doing so can serve the public interest, for example by holding institutions to account, or by reporting on matters of ongoing public debate.”
“Europe has a serious free speech problem. Instead of taking ever more measures to punish their citizens for what they say, it’s time for countries from Germany to Britain to abolish the deeply illiberal legislation they have, with little attention from the press or the public, introduced over the course of the last decades. To live up to the most basic values of the democracies that are now under threat, the continent needs to reverse course—and restore true freedom of speech.”
– Yascha Mounk
In the Guardian, April O’Neill writes,
The Online Safety Act is now partly enforceable. Paul might make you think a bit harder about it. Understandably, much of the conversation surrounding it has been focused on protecting children, but there is a glaring hole in this legislation regarding the protection of adults. Despite a 2022 report for the Ministry of Justice finding that the role of the internet in radicalisation pathways “was most evident for older rather than younger individuals”, the Tory government backed out from provisions that would have prevented adults from seeing “legal but harmful” content online over fears about freedom of speech.
April O’Neill holds that the people who need to be forcibly protected from hearing bad opinions are old people who distrust left wing media sources. Ms O’Neill is the winner of The Guardian Foundation’s 2025 Emerging Voices Awards (19-25 age category) recognising young talent in political opinion writing.
The modern view of a councillor is that they are there to promote state policies, such as Diversity and Inclusion (see, for example, the Equality Act 2010 – and the duties it lays down).
A councillor, or even a Member of Parliament, is not there, according to the modern view, to represent ‘reactionary’ residents or constituents – not AGAINST the state, but rather the elected representative is there to help the resident or constituent get benefits or services from the state. And to promote Progressive attitudes and behaviour.
I am not saying I agree with the modern view – I am just explaining what it is.
After all supporting ‘reactionary’ residents might imply that one shared their opinions and, therefore (according to the modern view – of the training colleges and so on) deserved to share their punishment.
– Paul Marks
I will get to the subject of Hertfordshire Police in 2025 in due course. First, answer me this: “Why didn’t anyone speak out during the Salem witch trials, given how incredibly fake they were?”
I came across this question in a tweet from someone calling themselves “Science Banana”. Mr or Ms Banana goes on to describe how the Salem accusers started off by denouncing easy targets – two women of questionable repute and a slave. But they did not stop there.
Their next choice was very shrewd. The fourth person the “afflicted girls” accused was a highly religious and respectable woman who had publicly expressed skepticism of their ridiculous bullshit. She was immediately arrested and imprisoned.
Genuine belief would do for most; preference falsification would keep the rest quiet.
After the skeptic, the next “witch” accused and imprisoned was an elderly church lady of spotless reputation. And the same day, a four-year-old girl. She went to prison too. At that point, the accusers knew they could get away with anything.
The Salem Witch trials are usually cited “as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolation, religious extremism, false accusations, and lapses in due process.” The evil consequences of all these things were indeed made clear in the witch hunt, which cost at least twenty-five innocent people their lives. But the affair was also a tale of boiling the frog.
Now I’ll talk about what Hertfordshire Police were up to last week. Frederick Attenborough of the Free Speech Union tells the increasingly odd story of Hertfordshire Police vs two primary school parents:
A story that seemed troubling enough when it emerged over the weekend is turning out to be even worse than it first appeared, with the strange willingness of Hertfordshire Police to intervene in a debate at a primary school proving ever stranger.
On Saturday, the Times reported that in late January six uniformed officers in three marked cars and a van had been sent to arrest Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine after their child’s school, Cowley Hill Primary, objected to a series of emails and “disparaging” comments in a parents’ WhatsApp group. As the police carried out a search of the house, the couple were detained in front of their three year-old daughter, before being held in cells for eight hours. And all this for querying the recruitment process for a new headteacher.
Accused of “casting aspersions” on the chair of governors in an “upsetting” way, they were then questioned on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property.
Following a five-week investigation the police concluded there was insufficient evidence and took no further action – although the knock at the door, the squad vehicles and the highly public arrest by half a dozen officers must have felt like quite a punishment already.
No wonder that Mr Allen, a producer at Times Radio, said the couple’s treatment represented “massive overreach” by Hertfordshire Police. He told the Times: “It was absolutely nightmarish. I couldn’t believe this was happening, that a public authority could use the police to close down a legitimate inquiry. Yet we have never even been told what these communications were that were supposedly criminal, which is completely Kafkaesque.”
But it now transpires that the force’s intervention wasn’t restricted to Mr Allen and Ms Levine. Hertfordshire Police also warned Michelle Vince, a local county councillor, to stop helping the family by sending emails to the school on their behalf – or risk being investigated herself.
On this occasion, the police attempt at intimidation backfired because Mr Allen is a producer at Times Radio and therefore had instant access to the national press. You can listen to him talk about what happened here. The fact that the police felt confident to proceed as they did strongly suggests that they have done this before to less well-connected people and it worked.
As the article says, it gets worse.
And still there’s more. The email to Ms Vince asked her to forward the warning to anyone she’d cc’ed when contacting the school. This included the local Conservative MP, and former Deputy Prime Minister, Sir Oliver Dowden.
Ms Vince said she felt “uncomfortable” passing on the warning to Sir Oliver. For his part, he was “astonished that a situation could have arisen where any police officer could think it would be remotely acceptable to suggest that an MP should be curtailed in carrying out their democratic duties”.
First a local councillor, then an MP. Note that when the police tried to intimidate a bunch of stroppy parents they did not know that one of them had a job with a national newspaper, but when they tried to frighten Councillor Michelle Vince and Sir Oliver Dowden MP (not just a Knight of the Realm and an MP, but a former Deputy Prime Minister – think about that) into ceasing to represent their constituents, the police knew exactly what these people’s roles were. To stop Councillor Vince and Sir Oliver performing the duties of their elected positions was the point. I rather think that the eminence of Sir Oliver was part of the point, too. They thought they could get away with anything.
The police probably thought of themselves as fearlessly taking on the powerful, a motive which has also been ascribed to those young girls in seventeenth century Salem. But if they really wanted to fearlessly show that no one is above the law, they could have directed the six uniformed officers in three marked cars and a van to arrest someone who might fight back.
As most of you will know, I covered the sentencing of the Southport Killer live on Twitter/X as event unfolded in the courtroom on 23 January 2025.
During the hearing, I created a timeline recounting what happened on the day of the attack, minute-by-minute, so that the public could see the full horror of this attack, and what had been kept out of the media.
This was followed by indirect criticism from Merseyside Police who claimed the families had asked for the details of the case not to be published. This had been a lie, told for the convenience of the Police who did not want a riot to breakout as a result of their lies and inaction.
– Charlie Bentley-Astor
Read the whole thing.
Keep comments relevant.
Why? How many real-life, off-screen cases of femicide has Tate actually been provably linked with? Not as many as a casual newspaper reader may be led to presume. Andrew didn’t bomb all those little girls to death at the Manchester Arena a few years back, did he? Mere days after Adolescence went up on Netflix, the UK’s counter-terrorism tsar, Robin Simcox, released a report into 100 convicted UK-based terrorists arrested between 2004 and 2021, analysing their “mindset material”, like social media activity. This found that, of the 100 studied, 85 could be classed as Islamists, 14 as ‘far-Right’ (whatever that even is now) and… one as being an incel. Appropriately enough, really, for such a committed breed of professional loners.
– Steven Tucker (£)
There is something deeply wrong when a law passed with cross-party consensus and endorsed by Britain’s most trusted charities has made it impossible to run an internet forum for hamster owners.
— Sam Dunitriu, as screenshotted by atlanticesque to point out the wilful obtuseness of an opposing view.
“Councils begging for your savings isn’t a net zero innovation – it’s an embarrassment”, writes James Baxter-Derrington in the Telegraph.
In an attempt to plug the ever-increasing funding gap, bankrupt-adjacent local councils have dusted off the begging bowl and covered it in tinsel.
Under the guise of investment, Green-led Bristol has become the latest council to offer what smells like a voluntary council tax to fund responsibilities that should be met from their existing budgets.
[…]
But in a demonstration of phenomenal gall these local bodies have launched their own Kickstarter for Councils, asking not only their residents, but anyone across the country, to foot the net zero bill – in exchange for below-market returns.
These green bonds can be found on Abundance Investment, a platform that facilitates these loans for a slice of the pie – 0.75pc of the total sum raised alongside an annual 0.2pc fee. The website proudly declares that it offers investments with councils “in a solid financial position”, despite Bristol councillors declaring just two months ago that the body faced bankruptcy if it can’t close its £52m funding gap.
Samizdata is not often seen as the go-to place for investment advice, but, on balance and after careful consideration, I would suggest that readers seeking a home for their money avoid “Bristol Climate Action Investment 1” like the plague and avoid “Hackney Green Investment 2” like Hackney. (“Does ‘Murder Mile’ still deserve its name?” asked the Hackney Post after a lull. Short answer: Yes.)
Nonetheless, I salute these councils for seeking to raise additional money by asking for it instead of demanding it with menaces. I would salute them even more if they moved entirely to a voluntary system. Though the prospect is unlikely, I hope the investors make their money back with interest, so that this trend towards councils raising money by ethical means might spread.
“They each knowingly made a false statement of fact to the Court and Dr. Mann knowingly participated in the falsehood, endeavoring to make the strongest case possible even if it required using erroneous and misleading information.”
– Judge Alfred S. Irving, Jr., regarding the case of Michael E. Mann, Ph.D., v. National Review, Inc., et al in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia Civil Division 2012 CA 008263 B.
Hat tips to John in the comments to yesterday’s post and to John Hinderaker of Powerline via Instapundit.
As Mr Hinderaker says, the facts of this case are rather complicated but the judge’s conclusions are unequivocal – and the conclusion of the court that Dr Michael E Mann, maker of the famous “Hockey Stick Graph”, knowingly participated in a falsehood has a certain… resonance.
Related post: “Samizdata quote of the day – unfortunately the high-status fraudster won.” I am happy to say that the injustice done a year ago has been partially undone by this latest ruling.
“Never forget that making Britain into a broke, repressive dystopia was a deliberate choice”, writes Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph.
The article starts by repeating a familiar refrain about the unprecedented loss of civil liberties during the pandemic.
As we approach the fifth anniversary, we don’t like to admit that we destroyed our economy, took away part of our kids’ childhoods, permanently aggrandised the state and indebted ourselves for a generation – all for nothing.
All true, but the real meat is here:
Five years ago this Tuesday, Jenny Harries, then the deputy chief medical officer, gave an illuminating, though now neglected, interview. It was not neglected at the time. On the contrary, it took place in No 10, and the interviewer was the prime minister himself, Boris Johnson.
Dr Harries – who has since become Dame Jenny, and been put in charge of the UK Health Security Agency – was impressively level-headed. She explained that, “for most people, it really is going to be quite a mild disease”.
She advised against wearing facemasks unless told otherwise by your doctor. She explained why Britain, unlike many countries in Europe, was not banning large meetings or sporting events. There was, she reminded us, a plan in place, and it provided for the gradual spread of the disease through the population in a way that would not overwhelm hospitals. Try to suppress the spread too vigorously, she said, and there would be a peak later on (which, indeed, is exactly what happened).
Dr Harries was absolutely right, but she was only repeating the global consensus. A little earlier, the WHO had looked at lockdowns and concluded that they were “not demonstrably effective in urban areas”. Its researchers had carried out a study of 120 US military camps during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, and found “no statistical difference” between the 99 camps that had confined men to quarters and the 21 that had not.
As recently as 2019, the WHO had declared that lockdowns as a response to respiratory diseases were “not recommended because there is no obvious rationale for this measure, and there would be considerable difficulties in implementing it”.
Dr Harries knew all this. And so did Boris, who spoke what was, in retrospect, the most telling line of the entire interview: “Politicians and governments around the world are under a lot of pressure to be seen to act, so they may do things that are not necessarily dictated by the science,” he said.
If was capable of having that thought, he was capable of acting on it, or rather of continuing to act on it. He was not, as I once thought, a man in a panic who, pathetically but understandably, followed the the united voice of “the experts” because he could not imagine doing anything else. As a successful politician he knew the political nature of the pressure he was under and chose to give into it. He switched which expert to follow – switched from the expert who was right to the “expert” who was wrong – on political grounds. Oh, no doubt his decision was influenced by which expert shouted the loudest (it was not Jenny Harries) and said the scariest things, but a refusal to be moved from a rationally-decided course by emotional displays is the very definition of a leader. I wonder, does he ever think now about how near he came to being the second Churchill he dreamed of being? All he had to do was stay firm.
Dr Harries responded that she was proud that Britain’s response had remained scientific.
Five days later, Boris took to the airwaves to tell people “to stop non-essential contact and travel”. A week after that, we were in lockdown (a term borrowed from prison, which I held out against using for as long as I could). What changed? Well, on March 16, Neil Ferguson and the team at Imperial College published an apocalyptic report based on modelling that estimated that if no measures were put in place deaths over the following two years could reach more than half a million.
And it was popular. Very popular.
Although we sometimes now imagine that Boris wrenched our freedoms from our unwilling hands, it was the other way around. We have forgotten the “Go Home Covidiots” banners, the terrified phone-ins, the YouGov poll showing that 93 per cent of voters wanted a lockdown.
Persuading people that they have been badly treated is easy. Persuading them that they themselves have behaved badly and stupidly is not easy at all. How do we do it? A cynic would say there is no need to try. Just publicly blame everything on “the politicians” (in this case Boris Johnson, who certainly deserves plenty of blame but not all of it) in the same way that the Greens publicly blame all the environmental damage they believe comes from humanity’s reliance on oil on “the oil companies” rather than the people who use the oil, namely all of us. But I do not believe that any strategy of persuasion that relies on a conscious lie can succeed in the long run.
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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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