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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Fraser Nelson, in a Daily Telegraph (£) column entitled “The Tories didn’t defend liberty in office. But it’s never too late to start.”
This is good analysis, if horrible in what it says about the UK public and where things are in terms of public opinion:
More bans and restrictions will be on their way. Starmer’s logic is clear enough: if sickness and illness cost the NHS money, then your diet becomes his business. Obesity, of course, costs the NHS far more than smoking. So there’s not much to stop restrictions on alcohol, fizzy drinks, bacon and life’s other guilty pleasures. If you let go of the principle of freedom, including the freedom to make bad health choices, it is hard to see where it all stops.
Indeed. A few years ago, people who went on about second-hand or “passive smoking” denied they wanted to ban smoking as such. That was a lie then, and now the mask is well and truly off.
Crucially, this is being driven by not by the nanny-statism of meddling politicians, but by public opinion. Over decades, there has been a shift towards wanting the government to ban more, to regulate more. The Sunak/Starmer smoking ban is backed by six in 10 people. Polling by the Health Foundation found a majority saying alcohol should not be promoted at sporting events, that salty and sugary foods should be taxed more. Another poll shows a third of the public wants smoking banned everywhere, immediately. When covid struck, there was a mass panic and huge demand for Wuhan-style lockdown.
Exactly so. Having said which, people in their actual behaviour – what economists and sociologists called “revealed preferences” – can act in ways that are rather more liberal than suggested by their answers to a pollster about banning X or Y.
For years, the jurist Jonathan Sumption has been pointing out how the empire of law is fast expanding, because the public seem to seek the state’s protection from a greater list of life’s everyday perils. And are prepared to accept ever greater curtailments of their liberty in order to do so.
Indeed. It adds to the costs and irritations of daily life.
It appears that there is some anger, even from the Labour side, about the Starmer proposal to ban smoking in pubs’ “beer gardens”, etc. So I hope that at least on that topic, the relentless urge to micro-manage life is meeting with resistance. But Starmer will not give up easily. Authoritarianism is his “thing”. Remember, the Prime Minister, when leader of the official opposition in the previous Parliament, wanted lockdowns to continue for longer than they did. His nickname, “Capt Hindsight”, was partly born out of that episode.
Given the complaints recently about “two-tier” policing of crime and disorder in the UK, I thought it worthwhile to set out this summary of the principles of policing as set out by former Home Secretary and reforming British statesman, Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), also renowned as founder of the modern Conservative Party (Tamworth Manifesto of 1834), remover of Corn Law tariffs, reformer of banking (with some remaining issues), and general all-round good guy of British history:
1, To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2, To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3, To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4, To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5, To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6, To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7, To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8, To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9, To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
I have read that in the days when newspapers still used metal type, the compositors used to keep commonly used headlines ready-formed. The Bloomberg headline below would require only the substitution of the appropriate country name to work for anywhere in the world in any decade since governments came to vex mankind:
How Rent Controls Are Deepening the Dutch Housing Crisis
A law designed to make homes more affordable ended up aggravating an apartment shortage.
Two years ago, Nine Moraal and her two children moved into a one-bedroom flat near the Dutch city of Utrecht, a comfortable spot close to family and friends. Although she had only a two-year lease, she expected to be able to extend it and stay until she could get one of the Netherlands’ many rent-controlled apartments.
But last spring, her landlord told her she’d have to move out in November, because renting the flat was no longer profitable. Despite “frantic efforts on social media, phone calls, visits to realtors and housing agencies,” the 33-year-old educator says she hasn’t found anything. “The cost isn’t the problem, but a real shortage of housing is.”
Moraal is among the growing number of Dutch people struggling to find a rental property after a new law designed to make homes more affordable ended up aggravating a housing shortage. Aiming to protect low-income tenants, the government in July imposed rent controls on thousands of homes, introducing a system of rating properties based on factors such as condition, size and energy efficiency. The Affordable Rent Act introduced rent controls on 300,000 units, moving them out of the unregulated market.
[…]
ASR Nederland NV, which owns about 15,000 apartments across the country, has called on the government to rethink the measure. Almost its entire portfolio was shifted into the regulated segment on July 1, spurring it to abandon plans to purchase more rental properties, says Jos Baeten, ASR’s chief executive officer. “There are other investment categories that are more appropriate,” he says.
One provision of the law bars short-term leases, instead requiring all contracts to be open-ended. Some in the industry suggest the change will encourage landlords to prioritize foreigners, who are more likely to move away after a few years, giving owners more flexibility.
Emphasis added. That’ll go down well with the PVV, currently the largest party in the Dutch House of Representatives.
I have given this BBC story the “Health & Medical” tag due to its description of traumatic events:
‘Trauma’ as Pride flags vandalised for fifth time
Pride flags vandalised for the fifth time in north-east London have left residents “traumatised”, a local LGBTQ+ organisation says.
The flags, which are on the pavement near Forest Gate railway station, were covered with white paint on Monday.
They were also vandalised on 9 March, as well as on 23 and 26 June and 19 July.
Rob DesRoches, founder of Forest Gayte Pride, external, said the organisation would work with Newham Council to repair or replace the flags, adding: “We feel that people have been traumatised by the repeated vandalism, which needs to be sorted out now. The healing process needs to take place.”
The Metropolitan Police previously said it was treating the vandalism as a homophobic and transphobic hate crime.
I send my good wishes for the progress of this deeply necessary “healing process” to the traumatised people of Forest Gate, especially to the approximately 25% of them who are Muslim. Despite my view that we would all be better off if there were no such thing as public property, I do not approve of individuals taking it upon themselves to inflict criminal damage on public property. But the line taken by the left since the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston is that it is fine to destroy street furniture of which you disapprove. So – anyone taking odds on how long it lasts till next time?
Government anti-terror ban forces closure of UK model steam train firm
A historic British firm which produced model steam trains for 87 years has been forced to close its doors after getting hamstrung by red tape.
Mamod this month closed down production in its factory due to dwindling sales and spiralling overheads, in an era of gaming consoles and social media.
The firm was also hobbled by a government ban on the ‘dangerous’ hexamine fuel tablets that had long been used in the models to heat water and set the intricate engines chuntering.
Founded in 1937, Mamod’s steam trains quickly became a favourite of children across the country, boasting static generators which powered models with wire loops and scaled-down traction engines.
While it is true that model steam engines of this type had all but disappeared as toys, there is a considerable market for them among dangerous men with names like Kenneth and Stanley who might convert their garden railways to hexamine-powered rail-mobile nuclear missile launch systems.
“Speech is not violence. Words cannot injure or compel a person to hate or riot. Consequently, the state has very little business policing it, and the outcomes are usually dire when it tries.”
– Institute of Economic Affairs, in an emailed newsletter it sends out. It refers to recent commentaries such as here and here.
I commend this article in Pimlico Journal for its unflinching analysis of where we find ourselves in the UK. Follow the link and read the whole thing, which is a grim tale I wish I could convince myself is excessively bleak.
The Narcissistic State represents a reversal of the key principal of the British social contract as outlined by Bishop Gilbert Burnett in the wake of the Glorious Revolution of 1688: that ‘government is for those who are to be government’. As the state starts once again to exist for its own sake, its priorities diverge from those of its citizens, and it increasingly starts to fail them.
Yet, like individual narcissists, the Narcissistic State demands praise even in failure, as encapsulated in the language adopted by the NHS ‘heroes’ or the ‘painstaking’ work the Metropolitan Police put into failed investigations. Here we recall the citizens of the Eastern Bloc who were not only expected to endure cold, fear, and hunger, but also to applaud those who kept them in such a condition. It never accepts blame or criticism, and reacts sclerotically when confronted with either. Indeed, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner himself physically lashed out at a reporter for asking him the question which is pressing most heavily on the mind of the public. Instead of looking to itself for answers, British law enforcement is going to the four corners of the earth to seek extrinsic causes for very civil unrest it has seeded. The Director of Public Prosecutions has suggested that foreign states might wish to extradite their citizens to Britain for departing from our state-sanctioned political narratives. Yet the same cohort will segue in the next breath to discussing the danger of Britain being affected by the authoritarianism of other governments; self-knowledge never being the forte of narcissists.
– Pimlico Journal
The Observer’s Property section had a sad but interesting story last Sunday:
‘They encouraged us to insulate our home. Now it’s unmortgageable’
Householders are angered by the discovery they cannot remortgage or sell their homes after installing spray-foam insulation to cut energy use.
Jim Bunce thought he was doing the right thing for his purse and the planet: in 2022, as fuel costs soared, he and his wife decided to improve the energy efficiency of their house.
They discovered that the government had endorsed spray-foam insulation, a quick and unobtrusive technique by which liquid foam is spray-gunned into roof spaces and walls. Their loft was successfully treated at a cost of £2,800 and their gas bills duly fell.
Now, two years on, they have found that, by making their home more energy efficient, they have also made it unsaleable. “We are unable to borrow against it, or potentially to sell it, unless the foam is completely removed,” says Bunce.
I feel sorry for Mr and Mrs Bunce. My title was not intended to single them out as being unusually insulated from reality; until recently the great majority of the population would have assumed that taking up a scheme promoted by the government was a safe choice.
It isn’t. On the contrary, if a new type of technological product is being pushed by government in order to meet national policy targets, that means that it has not been through the filter of large numbers of people freely deciding to buy it and telling their family and friends that it benefited them as individuals.
According to Tim Stanley (Daily Telegraph, 12 August): “District Judge Francis Rafferty said that anybody present at a riot can be remanded in custody, even if they were only a `curious observer’.
This leaves me (a journalist by training) wondering whether this means that, for example, someone such as Brendan Westbridge would be in trouble in being present at the scene such as this, if only as a “curious observer” who chose to share his observations on social media, a blog, etc. In the US, we have seen the case of the remarkably brave Andy Ngo, who covered the actions in places such as Seattle and Portland of Antifa, for example. He covered events that the MSM was less willing to cover, for various reasons.
The term “curious observer” is frighteningly ambiguous. For a start, what about the intent of the observer and the purpose of such action? Does this mean that a person who is walking nearby and goes towards a scene of commotion out of curiosity or concern for his neighbourhood counts as a “curious observer” as far as this judge is concerned? Does this mean that the instruction “nothing to see here, please move along” takes on added menace? Does it mean having eyes and ears is now potentially a criminal offence?
Suppose there were to be a disorderly and riotous gathering of, say, pro-Hamas demonstrators in a street, holding up placards calling for the extinction of the state of Israel (“from the river to the sea” etc). Imagine, say, you are a Jew, and understandably worried for your safety. Are you therefore a “curious observer” if you want to see what sorts of signs people are carrying, their emblems, what they are shouting? All very curious, if you ask me.
This leads me to speculate that we are moving towards the licencing of the media by the State in the UK. The only way not to be bracketed as a “curious observer” as far as this dimwit of a judge is concerned would, presumably, to have a badge and lanyard stating you are “press”, or a jacket of the sort they have in the police and FBI in the US, maybe (and therefore, a target for yobs who hate journalists.) Reporters would end up like official war correspondents in combat zones, forced to wear a garment with the word “press” on it and accompanied by the military or police.
And lest anyone thinks this is a narrowly Left-wing concern, I am sure there are supposedly more conservative politicians who would not be averse to such controls.
Here is an outline of the main political parties said about media regulation before the 4 July election. Not one of the parties came close to a full-throated defence, with no ifs or buts, about press freedom (subject only to the constraints of the Common Law such as libel, etc).
Reading this a few years ago, people might have assumed this was all satire, craziness, signs of the writer getting unduly hot and bothered. Yet here we are, more than a month into the administration of Sir Keir Starmers, on 35% of votes cast and on a 60% turnout, which is low by historical standards. On the basis of this loveless landslide, much mischief is being built. As he showed by his enthusiasm for lockdowns a few years ago, Sir Keir’s happy place, psychologically and politically, is authortarianism.
The idea of how the bottom-up, volantaristic forces drive a healthy society is a closed book to the prime minister. For Sir Keir, and many of his colleagues, they are always “seeing like a state”. The sadness is that in this regard, Sir Keir and is colleagues are far from alone.
Update: I cannot resist not putting up this splendid answer by Andrew Neil, former Sunday Times editor, TV presenter – and my former boss – to the idiotic question from an MP about what the State should do for the media. Play this, and enjoy.
Over the seas and far away, President Milei of Argentina has abolished a government function, that of INADI, the purpose of which was easily comprehensible from its name in Spanish, the Instituto Nacional contra la Discriminación, la Xenofobia y el Racismo the newspaper La Nación has this report, and I quote.
“Disolvimos el INADI. Ente ideológico de uso político partidario. Despedimos a los empleados y devolvimos el edificio. Nuestra gestión se concentra en achicar el Estado y cerrar los organismos innecesarios. No creemos en la utopía del Estado eficiente. Vamos por más, mucho más”, escribió el ministro de Justicia.
” ‘We have dissolved the INADI. An ideological entity of partisan political use. We are dismissing the staff and are taking back the premises. Our management will focus on shrinking the State and closing unnecessary organs. We do not believe in the utopia of the efficient State. We will be doing more, much more.’, wrote the Ministry of Justice.”
Looks like he means what he says. On one YT video (in Spanish) I saw a comment to the effect of ‘If there isn’t a government Department for Breathing, will we all be asphyxiated?’.
“I spent 6 HOURS tidying up a hedge overhanging a pavement near my home – I wanted to help but was branded a ‘criminal’”, the Sun reports.
A MAN has been branded a “criminal” after spending six hours tidying up an overhanging hedge to help locals.
Adam Myers, 22, thought he was carrying out a simple act of kindness when he chopped back grass verges on a stretch of 40mph road in the sleepy village of Broughton Moor, Cumbria.
The young lad, who has autism, jumped at the chance to fix-up the area after residents expressed concern online about walkers’ safety.
Around 10 minutes after the the chaotic bushes were strimmed and the weeds were ripped up, local cops received reports of “criminal damage”.
Adam had shared before and after pictures of his work on Facebook before being hit with backlash from the parish council.
A member of the community group commented on Adam’s post telling him he had broken the law and carried out an act of criminal damage.
The report of the incident in the Sun, quoted above, refers to a “member of the community group” reporting Adam Myers for criminal damage. However other accounts, such as the Telegraph‘s, say that the person who reported Mr Myers for criminal damage was actually a member of the parish council.
That would explain the sequel to this tale. According to the Telegraph link above,
An entire parish council has resigned after a man was reported to the police for criminal damage for clearing a roadside pavement of weeds, stinging nettles and brambles.
All seven members of the Broughton Moor parish council near Cockermouth, Cumbria, have quit following a backlash to news that Adam Myers, 22, who has autism, was reported for strimming grass verges and hedges near his home in the village.
They did not leave without a last petulant gesture:
In a statement posted on the parish council website said “As of June 20, and following an orchestrated campaign of bullying and abuse, both online and in person, against the members of the parish council and the clerk, Broughton Moor no longer has a parish council.
“All future plans for improvements for the village have been cancelled and the community centre has been closed.
If the reactions from citizens of Broughton Moor quoted by the Telegraph are typical, the now former councillors in question will not be missed. But to be fair to them – I always try to be fair to parish councillors, because the ones I know do a vast amount of work for either a tiny allowance or no money at all – there is a potential reason to object to individuals cutting hedges. The Sun may have missed that the person threatening to dob Adam Myers in was a parish councillor, but their account did include a little panel on “the rules” for cutting hedges, which said,
Under Section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, it’s an offence to intentionally damage or destroy a wild bird’s nest while it is being built or in use.
It does not say that was the reason the parish councillor or councillors objected to Adam Myers trimming roadside hedges himself; it just says that it could have been. But for that defence to work, it would have to be the case that the council lovingly inspected every hedge for birds’ nests before trimming them. Now, I have not had much chance to observe how the local councils in the vicinity of Cockermouth go about trimming hedges – though I know of a Samizdata reader who has – but I know how they do it in Essex. When the council gets round to it, which is not often, they send a vehicle equipped with a robot arm tipped by three spinning bladed wheels, whose passage instantly reduces any projecting branches of the hedge to dust. Any eggs or baby birds slumbering in their little home also get the scythed chariot treatment. The point is that someone such as Adam Myers – or such as I, since, dear readers, inspired by his example I have gone forth and done some hedgecrime myself – who laboriously snips the hedge branch by branch is infinitely more likely to see and avoid a nest than the man driving Boudicca’s chariot while wearing council-mandated goggles and ear-muffs.
So, all in all, it looks to me as if the ex-members of Broughton Moor Parish Council were annoyed at this young man for showing them up.
Today, however, free speech and politics are under concerted assault in the liberal democracies of the West. The public-private consortia directing that campaign—what has been called the Censorship Industrial Complex—was the topic of a conference at the end of June in London.
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The war against free speech is being fought with treaties and official agreements with wording as broad as a shotgun’s blast. One of many examples is the OAS’s 2013 Inter-American Convention Against All Forms of Discrimination and Intolerance. Article 1 of the Convention includes in its definition of intolerance “disrespect, rejection, or contempt . . . [for the] opinions” of others, while Article 4 states that the “duties of the [35 signatory] states” include “ [to] prevent, eliminate, prohibit, and punish, in accordance with their constitutional norms . . . all acts and manifestations of discrimination and intolerance.” But what is “disrespect”? What constitutes “rejection” of an opinion? Is, say, discussion of the connection between Islam and violence punishable intolerance? There are no clear answers to these questions, because the censors never define their terms. The vagueness deliberately encourages self-censorship by communicating an implicit warning: caveat loquens, let the speaker beware.
– Jacob Howland
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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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