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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I would like to suggest that Jonathan’s “Missing the point over grammar schools” below, itself misses the point. I am as in favour of grammar schools as anyone. But I do not think Cameron’s decision is any more than another piece of political pragmatism (read my comment on Jonathan’s piece for the rationale.)
I agree the new Tory policy does nothing significant for education. But I suspect Jonathan’s policy prescription – compromise vis-a-vis properly voluntary schooling it may be, is doomed. Introducing vouchers now would be worthless and the Tories are sensible, therefore, not to tie themselves to that. Not least they would risk discrediting vouchers: vouchers could be a move in the right direction, but not yet.
This is why. Here is a sensible lefty, Jenni Russell, reporting in the Guardian’s bloggish Comment is Free:
[A] father with an 18 year-old daughter at one of London’s famous public schools is shocked by her fear of anything beyond her narrow syllabus. She pleads with him not to tell her anything he knows about history or classics or literature, because she understands by now that knowing anything beyond the points on the examiners’ mark schemes will jeopardise her chances of getting top grades. She has learned that education is not about discovery, but the dutiful repetition of precisely what you have been told.
However good the school, however motivated the pupil, there is no choice to be had. There is a chemin-de-fer, directions predetermined, signals to be passed at the prescribed speed. No entry to university at 16, Mr Brown. No ignoring unutterably tedious and repetitious schoolwork and passing the exams at the end on the basis of your own reading. Step off the lockstep elevator once, and you are out for ever. (Mr Fry, the University regrets that we require a clean Criminal Records Bureau certificate.)
All Britain’s education is under the supervision of a suffocating bureaucracy, that serves itself and its conception of proper development. There is small choice in rotten apples; the sadly pocked sharecrop goes to uniform damp barrells.
Who is to blame? The conservative defenders of both grammar schools and ‘family values’, that is who; and the utilitarian industrialists who now complain workers can’t read or count. It was they who sought to save the population from indoctrination by radical Local Education Authorities, so delivered the entire population into the hands of pseudo-progressive educationalists by creating the National Curriculum; they who worried that universities could not be trusted to set sufficiently ‘practical’ exams, and did the same with syllabuses.
My modest proposal for English education:
Scrap the National Curriculum. Do not replace it. Scrap league tables and DoE “Key stage” testing. Do not replace them. Scrap rules on school admissions and allow schools to exclude or expel pupils as they choose. Scrap the QCA. Do not replace it. Scrap the Teacher Registration Regulations. Do not replace them. Scrap the office of the Access Regulator. Do not replace him. Wait five years, continuing to run and fund schools otherwise the same, which means a mix of Local Authority, central government, voluntary aided, and private schools. Only then, when people have got used to making their own decisions again, consider vouchers.
They are at it again. Medical experts are advising the state that they should mass medicate the population of Britain against a non-infectious disorder.
Perhaps a ‘totalitarianism’ of experts might be more accurate as Food Standards Agency seem to think it is the super-owner of the bodies of everyone in the country.
The problem is, they will outlaw almost everything while enforcing very little. Imprisonment by stealth. People will not know they are encircled until it is too late – like putting in all these very deep, robust fence-posts with no fence panels. All seems open. One day you will wake up and the panels are in, you are trapped and they can decide what law they wish to impose to nail whomsoever they desire.
– Regular commenter TimC in this thread.
Sean Gabb has written a fine piece called Defending the right to deny the Holocaust, stating why censorship undermines our ability to decide what is and is not true.
With regard to the holocaust, I have – broadly speaking – two options. I can believe that it did happen roughly as claimed. Or I can believe that it is a gigantic conspiracy of lies maintained since the 1940s in the face of all evidence. Since debate remains free in the English-speaking world, it should be obvious what I am to believe. I believe in the central fact of the holocaust. On the secondary issues mentioned above, where my authorities do not agree, I suspend judgement.
Take away the freedom to argue with or against these authorities, though, and my assurance that they are right must be weakened.
Read the whole thing.
As I prepare my itinerary for my next long chain of consultancy visits, my best customer (the one I do webcast editing for) has just purchased my ticket for the transatlantic leg. Now I suspect someone at Continental Airlines has a bit of a Libertarian or small government or at the very least a ‘do not blame us’ bent because the statement actually breaks out how each ‘involved government’ is stealing my money:
Equivalent Airfare:……………………….565.00
U.K. Air Passenger Duty: ……………….79.60
U.K . Passenger Service Charge:……..25.90
U.S. Customs User Fee:…………………..5.50
U.S. Immigration User Fee:………………7.00
U.S. APHIS User Fee:………………………5.00
U.S. Passenger Facility Charge:…………4.50
U.S. Federal Transportation Tax:……..30.20
U.S. Security Service Fee: ……………….2.50
Per Person Total: ……………………….725.20
I must admit it is much worse than I had thought. At times like these I remember the words of a southern gent I once worked with on a project at CSC: “Back where I come from, servicing was what a bull did to a cow.”
After reading the above, I am feeling very well ‘serviced’ by the UK and US governments.
Yesterday morning I caught myself committing two crimes simultaneously in a public place.
I emerged from Westminster underground station beside the Houses of Parliament wearing a NO2ID button, which almost certainly constituted an unauthorised demonstration contrary to the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2006. And, before proceeding southwards across the bridge to continue the same criminal conduct in Southwark and Lambeth on the way to where I was going, I took a leaflet from a young woman advertising a hairdresser, smiling and thanking her. If that is not ‘counselling and procuring an offence’ against the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005), given that Westminster City Council has taken the powers granted by the new Schedule 3A to prohibit the distribution of free literature, then I do not know what is.
I am minded to get a haircut. Presumably that would make my payment the proceeds of crime, and the hairdressing business subject to sequestration under the 2002 Act.
If things like this can happen on a sunny spring day under the eyes of the armed police and surveillance cameras protecting our diligent legislators, then no wonder the government is ‘cracking down on crime’ for the several-dozenth time in its Serious Crime Bill. If people can communicate and have social intercourse just as they like , without a license or the fear of prosecution, then there could be chaos.
The PM is quite right, plainly. Society is being menaced by the liberal, laissez-faire, values of the ’60s. People showed respect for authority in the 1550s, before we went soft on witchcraft and heresy.
I seldom encounter much in the way of verbal discussion attached to Flickr photos, because the kind of Flickr photos I usually look at are things like pictures of footbridges, concerning which there is really not a lot to be said, given how many such snaps abound on Flickr. But this snap (catchily entitled “DSC07222.JPG”) is different because it is a photo of a rather violent political demo in France. This was taken by an accredited photographer, who had his card examined by the Police but who was then permitted to keep his snap. But, says one of the commenters:
i got all the photos and videos i took yesterday on my camphone deleted by a policeman who told me he would arrest if he ever saw me doing again. I don’t know if he had the right to erase the photos, i should see about that.
Presumably not. My thanks and congratulations to Norwegian media blogger Kristine Lowe for the link to that, and for spotting the above comment. Kristine blogged earlier about the new French law.
If all French bloggers, podcasters, vodcasters, and even those snapping a picture with their mobile phone camera and sending it to a relative, could be put on trial or fined for publishing footage from the frontlines. How bizarre, troubling, surreal. …
Indeed. This is a huge issue. I was in Parliament Square not long ago and observed some hairy anti-war person being shoved into a Police van. The entire scene was surrounded by other demonstrators holding video cameras. They were subjecting to the Police themselves to surveillance, guarding the guardians you might say. I do not ever want that to be illegal in Britain, but in France, it would appear that it already is.
Expect a thriving market in fake “accredited photographer” cards. And expect things in France to get even more interesting, when, as they soon will, digital cameras become so small that it will be impossible for the Police or anybody else to spot them being used. In fact, expect things everywhere to get more interesting.
Meanwhile, I have been chronicling that brief moment when digital cameras are (were) quite small, but still visible in action.
“Hand-feeding is not appropriate to the species and is a grave violation of the animal protection laws,” said Frank Albrecht, an animal rights campaigner. “Legally speaking, the zoo should kill the baby bear. Otherwise it is condemning the bear to a dysfunctional life and that too is a breach of the law.”
– spotted in timesonline by Dizzy
Scott Wickstein notes a priceless piece of bureaucratic imbecility in New Zealand:
A New Zealand council has taken itself to court and successfully been fined $4,800 […] it will pay itself the fine, minus the court’s 10 per cent cut. It has already stumped up $3,000 for pre-trial “outside legal opinion”.
I also enjoyed an anonymous comment left on the post at Scott’s:
I wouldn’t be surprised if they lodge an appeal
There is a strong interaction between British ideas on security and those adopted by Europe, where New Labour dreams of authoritarian and democratic socialism can be writ large. The justification of a new database to hold fingerprints for every EU citizen is a larger white elephant than any yet conceived. Knowing the opposition that would arise if this project was publicised:
The proposal, which was buried in a lengthy European Commission document setting out policy goals for next year, managed the rare feat of uniting all sides in opposition. Euro-sceptics criticised them as the trappings of a super-state, while some of Europe’s most ardent supporters complained of a threat to civil liberties.
This is part of the extension of EU powers into the sphere of justice and security. The Commission has gained the power to prosecute certain crimes and wishes to extend these at a European level. The powers are descibed as “indispensable”. The project was initially based on a voluntary scheme between certain Continental countries and is now being extended through harmonisation and Member States’ agreement.
We will be less secure, crime will rise, and the databases portend further declines in civil liberties.
I am not the shockable type but this preamble to an article singing the praises of the tv hit, 24, had a pretty bracing effect on yours truly:
Fox’s hit drama normalizes torture, magnifies terror, and leaves conservatives asking why George W. Bush can’t be more like 24’s hero.
To use the word “normalise” next to the word “torture” is extraordinary. Maybe 24 does raise the issue of using torture as a desperate but necessary act, but I hardly imagine that the viewer is left thinking that there is anything “normal” about it, like brewing a cup of tea in the morning for breakfast or taking out the garbage. From what I recall, torture is seen as shocking, and rightfully so. Think also of the scene in Dirty Harry when Clint shoots and then beats up the psycho. You “know”, unlike in real life, that the baddie is a baddie and hence do not feel bad when he gets the Eastwood treatment. Real life is different, which is why we have pesky laws like no jail without trial, etc.
For what it is worth I enjoy 24. I have no idea what the programme-makers would think of their programme being thus described by the American Conservative.
For a brilliant demolition of those who use the “ticking bomb” scenario in movies and books to rationalise torture, this by Jim Henley is a must-read.
(Update: I should in fairness point out that the American Conservative article makes it pretty clear that it loathes the show, although the way in which the introductory paragraph is written sucks the reader into thinking that conservatives support the practice. I guess I fired off my angry post a bit too quick. That said, it does appear that some of the “appeal” of the show is in how it unashamedly portrays the use of torture. Remind me not to ever watch this show again).
… in the Charity Commission report into how UK charities can be better harnessed to do the state’s work (dressed up as a survey of what they are already doing). It is called Stand and Deliver [pdf].
[Hat tip: Minette Marin in the Sunday Times]
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