Free speech is about the state dictating what is or is not acceptable, not about free people freely expressing contempt for contemptible behaviour.
– Commenter Counting Cats
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You might think that with all the worries about recession, bank failures and so on, that political leaders might want to avoid making ever greater commitments on public spending. Not so. Just to remind us about the kinds of concerns that animate the political classes, here is this story:
It is hardly a fear. It is a reality.
It is important to remember that even supposedly private sector firms such as Vodafone can easily find it next-to-impossible not to co-operate with governments on stuff like this, particularly if the government can threaten to cut off licences.
So let’s assume that the government has data on the 40 million-plus people who buy a pre-paid phone. Even leaving aside the moral objections to such a database, the practical issue of how on earth one can sift through the haystack of millions of such details for the possible pin of a terrorist plot does not seem to register. But then again, one must remember that the database state is not really about terrorism. It is a beast that is now acquiring a life of its own. After all, thousands of jobs, millions of profits, are tied up with this. If the Tories really do stick to their pledge to shut this thing down – and I would not want to bet my house on it – it is going to put a lot of “consultants” out of a job. A certain grim satisfaction would be involved in that. My wife, who is a consultant, refuses to work on any such things, god love her. October 20th, 2008 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Poor naive George W. Bush! For all his shambolic presidency, his dreadful mistakes, and the horrors of aggressive imperialism, his last couple of months in office could end up being the most disastrous for the world. Bloomberg reports:
Just how bad this could be is already showing. The report continues:
Just what has the continuation of the OECD nations’ campaign to plunder smaller states and institute globally uniform (high) taxation got to do with the market crash? Nothing. Executive pay? Irrelevant, too, save in the politics of envy. Mainstream banks, not hedgies, were the ones that crashed after playing iffy games with CDOs, and governments helped pump-up house prices – with enthusiasm. Where this agenda comes in is as an opportunity to kick the resented “Anglo-Saxon” model of capitalism while it is down – even, and especially, in those places where it is not down yet. (Are we missing Commissioner Mandelson yet?) Mr Bush has lost the thread entirely if he really thinks a transnational “reform” of the financial system can do other than damage “free markets, free enterprise and free trade”. He may have a patchy record on liberty, and a bad record on limited government. His guests in November will have no interest in either. They will tempt him (have tempted him) with the mantle of world saviour, and will try to get him to bind his successors. We shall have to hope that his successor, either one of whom would be well to the economic right of the self-selected ‘international community’, depressingly enough, is more wily and far-sighted. Meanwhile, where is there left to run? October 19th, 2008 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
It has been a memorable weekend for yours truly, nearly all for very nice reasons. Over the past few days, the weather in much of the UK – after a truly crap summer – has been glorious. There are few things to beat than walking along in a leafy park, with the autumn season turning the leaves into golds and reds, then sitting on the side of a river, cold beer in hand, in the company of close friends. I did all that in Cambridge over the weekend. The credit crunch and the worries of the financial world seemed, if only for a few hours, very far away. But then when walking with a friend around the Quad of Pembroke College, I felt as if I could have been in another century. But perhaps I should have been prepared for a surreal weekend when I opened my mail on Saturday morning. First off, I got a letter from those admirable folk at the NO2ID campaign urging me to help contribute some money. I have already paid over a cheque and was happy to send another (please follow my example). And then I opened another, very different letter, from the UK Department Of Health. The DoH has something called a “Biobank”. This is a government-run research project designed to track the health of a cohort of the UK population aged between 40 and 69. As I and my wife are both in our early 40s, we are obviously in the cohort. I was informed that a “provisional appointment” had already been made on my behalf and that I nevertheless had the option to refuse. I have refused. While checking the health of certain people and attempting to judge their vulnerability to certain diseases or conditions can be a worthwhile thing for say, a private insurer to do, I had no desire to go along with a government programme. The reason is not simply that it would involve acquiring yet more intimate health details on myself, but recent embarrassing losses of government data give me no confidence that such details will not be lost. Also, one has to ask to what purpose will the “Biobank’s” findings be put? Presumably, to help drive government policy to cajole, encourage or indeed coerce UK citizens to change their personal habits. I consider that taking part in such a campaign would involve my giving my sanction to such things. Well, at least I had the option to refuse to take part in this project, which is something. But one wonders how long such indulgence might last. Sooner or later, the DoH might consider it necessary to make involvement in such surveys compulsory. October 12th, 2008 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have just read an article here (with thanks to Glenn Reynolds) which reports some really good news:
This has been done to put a total stop on efforts of individuals who, just to invent a hypothetical case mind you, travel from Saudi Arabia to the United Kingdom to sue a publisher in the United States. I can not imagine anyone doing something like that of course… September 29th, 2008 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Overwhelmingly carried by the TUC. Coming not very long after the British Air Transport Association (the association of airlines and airports) expressed its “joint and determined opposition to the proposal” [pdf], this suggests the current scheduling of the UK National Identity Scheme may have some problems. Expect yet another repositioning shortly. (My guess: it’ll be about “immigration control”.) September 10th, 2008 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
On a spring day in Beijing almost a decade ago, tens of thousands of people gathered on the pavement surrounding the high-walled Zhongnanhai compound, the Chinese equivalent of the Kremlin. They were protesting, but there was barely a murmur to be heard from the enormous crowd. There were no banners, no megaphones noisily chanting demands, no unruly behaviour. It was not a typical demonstration – the participants were seated and meditating. They stayed for around twelve hours. These people were members of the rapidly expanding Falun Gong sect, and they were asking for recognition, legitimacy and an end to perceived mistreatment from the Chinese central government. The then-Chinese premier met with the group’s leaders, following which they all left as quietly as they had arrived. Shortly after this protest, the Chinese government declared the sect a dire ideological threat to the People’s Republic of China, and a huge and rigorous nationwide crackdown followed. Practitioners in powerful positions saw their careers ended abruptly. Thousands were ‘re-educated’. Several, according to numerous human rights advocates, did not survive their enlightenment at the hands of the Chinese state. The sect’s leader was demonised, its teachings subjected to the harshest denunciations. In response, many Falun Gong practitioners held silent protests all over China. A few caught the world’s attention by self-immolating in Tiananmen Square, which explains why each of the numerous military personnel guarding the square have a fire extinguisher placed within arm’s length of their positions. Unsurprisingly, these protests failed. Falun Gong in mainland China is a massively diminished, illegal underground movement. It is still an extremely politically sensitive topic in China. It is carefully referred to as ‘FG’ when written about on-line, in the (probably vain) hope that such abbreviations will avoid the notice of China’s vigilant internet police (who probably do not care all that much about 99% of these references, but the fact that Chinese internet users go to such lengths is revealing in itself). The government has successfully and widely propagated the idea that Falun Gong is a degenerate cult. → Continue reading: A fork in the road September 6th, 2008 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
I vote for the fifth option, which is “There should not be a drinking age”, on the basis that it is none of the government’s damn business. August 26th, 2008 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
I could not help but be struck by the nice, polite, and almost friendly manner of the police officer making violence-backed threats in the video below (“If you refuse this [random] search, you will be arrested.”). It may not be news to you that the face of the police state is often a perfectly pleasant one, but I think it is worth spreading the word. (Full disclosure: I work for Qik, and it was one of our users who live streamed the above video from his mobile phone to the web using our software.) August 19th, 2008 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am more than usually depressed by the report of the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights that is published today. A Bill of Rights for the UK? is a reaction to the present administration’s kite flying for a “British Bill of Rights and Duties“, and goes to confirm my suspicion that human-rights lawyers are equipped with a tin ear for political discourse as part of their education. They do not see the fierce conditionality of Rights-and-Duties. They are in their eunoetic little universe of the kindly legislator not the populist fury. Rather than a reaction of horror at the transparent desire to entrench ergate slavery to a corporatist ‘civic republican’ state as a citizen’s lot, there’s a mild whinge that the Government isn’t speaking clearly enough – no grasp that there is a different language in use:
That I could support. And the discussion in the same section makes some sense of reframing the ECHR and the Human Rights Act to give better protection to individual liberty against the state. However, it doesn’t face up to the Government’s agenda, which is entirely opposite. It doesn’t, as any Bill of Rights worth the name would do, presuppose the implacable hostility of authority to the exercise of freedom. The rest is horror. Chandler called the game of chess “as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency”. You would need to harness a gigantic advertising group – WPP, say – for a full year, to piss away as much brain and education as has been wasted in the construction of the Outline of a UK Bill of Rights and Freedoms. Given the task of criticism and reflection, they have been reflexively orthodox. Not just the committee, but most of their witnesses, have demonstrated that, if it contingently makes the owner deaf to political meanings, the purpose of the tin ear in human-rights legal education is to pour jurisprudential treacle directly into the brain. August 10th, 2008 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
Following Brian’s lead, I predict a legislative scorched earth as well as a financial one, when the UK parliament returns. It is not just that the present administration realises its days are numbered and will try to get more of The Project through, and to construct extra-parliamentary power structures as bunkers to occupy in opposition. All over Whitehall, departmental pet projects will be being dusted-off (e.g) and presented to weak ministers, the hope being to get them through before a new, critically-minded, Government takes office and crowds them out with plans of its own. The question I have for Samizdata readers is this: what will the neo-puritans set out to regulate… suppress… ban next? Smoking is nearly fully suppressed. The work on alcohol has truly begun. Government intervention into our personal lives: what’s next? * [This is an allusion, so I pray our editorial pantheon will let the contraction stand. July 26th, 2008 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
As of July 15th, it is no longer possible for a European to fly in a vintage DC-3. Air Atlantique ran a very successful farewell tour around the UK and its flights were sold out. Perhaps one continent’s loss is another’s gain and these passenger-worthy classics will find a home across the pond where they can continue to bring the joy of flying in the most marvelous working airplane every built. Maybe we should start a tradition like that of the Muslims, but instead of bowing towards Brussels at a given hour each day, we could give them the other end to show the full depth of our respect for them. July 21st, 2008 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
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