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 defy anybody to refer to this guy as a chickenhawk:
A Danish pizzeria owner who refused to sell pizzas to Germans or Frenchmen because of their governments’ stance on the war in Iraq is to go to prison.
An appeal court upheld the conviction yesterday of Niels-Aage Bjerre for discrimination and his fine of £500. He said he would refuse to pay and will instead spend eight days in jail.
“I will not pay the fine but I’ll do the time instead,” said Bjerre. “It is a matter of principle.”
Now, speaking personally, I regard the boycotting of individuals as rather unfair and petty. Having said that, Mr.Bjerre should not be prosecuted for doing so.
Mind you, I bet if look the word ‘defiant’ up in the dictionary you’ll find this guy’s photograph underneath.
He said yesterday that both the courts and those who had reported him to the authorities were “traitors”.
“The judges have chosen to support those who do not support the official Danish position on the war against Iraq.”
His boycott would end only “if the governments of France and Germany change their attitude toward the United States and support Washington wholeheartedly,” he added.
He’s not just a restaurateur, he’s a neo-restaurateur.
After nearly a decade in which many Big Government restrictions have been lifted from Ireland, helping turn it into the Celtic Tiger, it seems Big G is back again.
Irish pub landlords will now be fined up to thousands of pounds if they allow their customers to become drunk (no, I’m not kidding). Happy hours are also banned, when landlords can decide what prices to charge for their drinks, at any particular time of day.
This should raise another nice little line of regulation for another bunch of twerpish bureaucrats to supervise, rather than working for a living, interfering once again in the market trade process of exchanged goods.
Pub landlords will also be deemed responsible for anyone who is drunk, after they have left their premises. Which is nice. It seems even Ireland, for millennia a land of little or no government, is getting Big G back with a vengeance.
If we dug a little further would you suspect the EU is under this somewhere? I wonder…
I just did a little talk spot on the radio, jabbering away about politics with a guy called Mike Dickin, who, in addition to doing his fare share of sport talk, takes care of the political chat on Talk Sport Radio. I’m doing little spots with Mike Dickin quite often at the moment, although usually at very short notice. When I typed “Mike Dickin” and “Talk Sport Radio” into google, this came up as entry number two, out of just ten. I don’t know what that proves exactly. Perhaps that most of the people who listen to Mike Dickin are too old or too poor to be bothering with the internet.
Mike Dickin is what we here would call a Carr-ite. The world’s going to hell but what the hell can we do about it? “I don’t trust the police. I don’t trust social workers. I don’t trust any of the people to whom I pay such vast sums of money to take care of things” – that’s what he was saying today in his intro. In among agreeing with him about state over-regulation and the state crowding out individual initiative, I tried to put in an optimistic word along the lines of “you can still do some things – it’s not all misery”. He replied “Maybe you can, but I’m starting to think seriously that you can’t do it here any more?” “So where can you?” I said. I can’t remember what he replied, but no specific locations were mentioned.
During our brief conversation, I accused Dickin, politely I hope, of being a fine example of the Baby Boom generation having entered its Grumpy Grandad phase. When the Baby Boom was a teenager it told the world it had invented sex. When it got its first job it and started driving about in a flash car it told the world that it had invented the idea of getting a job and driving about in a flash car. And now the Baby Boom is starting to creep away to the pub where it booms forth to anyone who will listen that the world is going to hell, and that young people these day, blah blah blah.
However, it occurs to me that I might just as fruitfully have identified the particular way in which the State now makes a mess of our lives as having lilkewise entered its Grandad phase, or to be more exact its Grandma phase. → Continue reading: Grandma socialism
A British mother and her two sons were given jail sentences yesterday, less than four days after they were arrested for allegedly attacking an Athens shopkeeper.
During a four-hour hearing at Athens criminal court the main prosecution evidence was read, with no opportunity for cross-examination. Police statements were contradictory and the British defendants had only five minutes each to state their case.
The family believes it has been the victim of a Greek backlash against the drunken and lewd behaviour of young British holidaymakers on the islands of Rhodes and Corfu.
We are being made scapegoats for the antics of hooligans on some of the islands. There have been despicable occurrences on the islands, but we are not that type of people.
No forensic evidence was presented, although it had been stated that Mr Karamichalous was bleeding heavily after the brothers kicked him.
The metal bar referred to both by the Britons and Mr Karamichalous was not recovered from the scene. Although the Johnsons had been locked up since the early hours of Sunday, officers did not take a statement from any of them.
Their only opportunity to give their side of the story was when each took the stand for about five minutes.
Regardless of the facts of the case, of which I have no detailed knowledge, the speed and manner in which the family of Britons living in Greece were sentenced smacks of political and nationalist gestures. Their prosecution is seen as backlash against the loutish behaviour of British tourists on Greece’s holiday islands. The case has made headline news in Greece where the Johnsons’ story has been illustrated with photographs and footage of British tourists misbehaving on the islands of Rhodes and Corfu.
Blimey! The Greek legal system makes the British courts seem like the pinnacle of civilisation.
Although this article was published a week ago, I doubt it is out of date. Andrew Osborn speaks of his and other Belgians’ encounters with the country’s small army of fonctionnaires.
Armed with a battery of Dickensian stamps, a rulebook as obtuse as it is thick and the mindset of Cruella De Vil, they do their best to make the life of the ordinary citizen a special Belgian form of hell.
Apparently, in Brussels, you can end up in court for taking your rubbish out a day early.
Put it out on the wrong day or in the wrong type of bag and you are likely to bring down the entire weight of the Belgian establishment on you. A friend recently received a letter saying she had been fined 80 euros (£57) for putting her bin bags out a day early.
But how did they know it was her rubbish? The “rubbish police” of course: enclosed with the demand for 80 euros were grubby photocopies the police had made of letters addressed to her which they had scrupulously recovered from the offending bin bag. Big Brother, it seems, is alive and living in a suburb of Brussels. In order to contest the fine she had to appear before a special “bin bag” tribunal and explain that a neighbour had erroneously put it out for her.
Failure to sort your rubbish into a choice of three different coloured bin bags is also a serious offence. In normal circumstances, that would be understandable, highly laudable, and a real fillip for Belgium’s environmental credentials. But it isn’t: all the bags are thrown in the back of the same truck and then thrown onto the same dump. The Belgians, it is explained, are merely trying to get people into good habits before they start properly recycling the rubbish themselves.
The Belgians are taxed on the most ludicrous items. Who works out which ones they should be?
The issue on which Belgian officials outdo themselves is tax. Own a car radio? You had better make sure you’re paying the special car radio tax, and don’t try to pretend that you haven’t got one. They know.
Want to open an office in Brussels? Then make sure you’re paying your computer screen tax. Just count up the screens and tell the authorities and they’ll send you a bill.
The most poignant example of the kind of mentality that is threatening to engulf Britain is the depressing lack of humanity of the rule and those who enforce them. A long-term resident gloomily describes his trip to a Belgian police station to complain about being woken up by builders illegally starting work at 6.30am:
“Do you have your identity card Monsieur?” (mandatory in Belgium).
“Well, no, it’s 7am and I’ve forgotten it. I’ve just woken up. Sorry.”
“Monsieur, that’s an infraction of the penal code. You’re breaking the law.”
We often complain that the British officials are robotic, impersonal and inefficient. And yes, they are. But they cannot compete with the spawn of the Belgian officialdom.
Having already done most of my schoolboy sniggering in private (although I reserve the right to indulge it again at a later date) I think I can now bring myself to say a few (semi) serious things about this:
Belgian legislators are hoping to bring that to a close with a parliamentary bill that would draw prostitutes into the legal fold and bring the industry under state control, providing sex workers with labour rights and greater health protection.
But for a fee.
The sex workers themselves would be expected to pay up when the tax man calls – boosting state coffers to the tune of an estimated 50 million euros a year.
It represents an attractive option for a country currently struggling to balance its budget deficit – a means of generating money while affording prostitutes better protection.
Not so much legalisation then as part-nationalisation and while it would be nice to imagine that Belgium’s lawmakers have been driven by a genuinely liberal impulse it is more likely that they have been prompted by the desire to get their sticky mitts on all that revenue.
However, I think complaints would be out of order. The trade in (ahem) ‘personal’ services between adults is not a crime and should not be treated as one, so although they may have to hand over a chunk of their earnings to the state at least the prostitutes (and their clients) will have been freed from the constant threat of arrest and prosecution. That is a good thing.
Aside from the fact that we can now justifiably and factually regard them as pimps, the Belgian government would undoubtedly argue that they cannot legitimise the sex industry without subjecting it to the same taxes that every other legitimate industry is forced to stump up. Nor should it be overlooked that gangster protection may prove cheaper than the Belgian state but tax-inspectors generally do not use razors as a means of enforcement.
I sincerely hope that HMG decides to follow the Belgian example on this issue but I don’t expect they will do so anytime soon. Even in this day and age there is still a deeply-ingrained Sabbatarian disapproval of ‘bawdiness’ in this country that manifests itself as a very noisy and effective ‘no’ lobby at the merest mention of relaxing the laws on prostitution. I wish it were not so because even a taxed-and-regulated sex industry would be an improvement on the current arrangements.
There are probably several books worth of analysis here but, at first glance, I cannot decide if this is an example of the left trying to appeal to Islam or Muslims trying to appeal to the left:
An Islamic conference in the Spanish city of Granada has called on Muslims around the world to help bring about the end of the capitalist system.
The call came at a conference titled ‘Islam in Europe’ attended by about 2,000 Muslims.
On the face of it, it looks like Muslims nailing their colours firmly to the marxist mast but, on closer examination, that may not actually be the case because it appears that the ringleaders here are not Arabs or Africans but European converts:
Mr Vadillo, a Spanish Muslim, called on all followers of Islam to stop using western currencies such as the dollar, the pound and the euro and instead to return to the use of the gold dinar.
The conference also heard from Abu Bakr Rieger, a German Muslim.
He said Islam could only be practised in Europe in a traditional way, not in one adapted to European values and structures.
It is entirely possible that these peope have converted to Islam our of a sense of sincere conviction but it is equally possible that they are anti-Western revolutionaries who, thirty years ago, would have joined the Red Brigade or the Bader-Meinhoff gang. For them, Islam is now the best and most accessible means of publicly rejecting Western enlightenment values as wella s providing a far bigger and more respectable fig-leaf behind which they can play out all of their psychoses.
If that is the case, then maybe it is not so much a case of Islam overunning Europe but Europe overunning Islam.
With his surname partially derived from the Gods, and his standing as an Englishman of Scottish descent, you may already know I love Iain Duncan Smith, beyond the edge of reason. But yesterday, in Prague, he ripped open his long silence, on the European issue, and moved to lead the Europe-wide revolt against the long-planned socialist super state. Which, for those of us in the “Get out of Here” Euro-nexus, within the Tory party, is excellent news; it confirms our faith, in why we voted him in, as leader.
As the Maastricht rebel leader strutted his stuff, he even picked up a favourable review from Alastair Campbell’s scoop-favoured creatures on The Sun. Trevor Kavanagh, their maverick political commentator, feared by the Downing Street lie machine, and a man, by order of Rupert, beyond the reach of Labour-supporting editor Rebekah Wade, also said about Duncan Smith:
Europe will hear him and Britain will agree
In my opinion, IDS is the bravest man, in British politics, from the entire period of the last 30 years. Can you imagine having woken up, every morning, for the last two years, and then been forced to view the world through his semi-oriental eyes? He has been vilified, pilloried, and humiliated, in every newspaper, on every Channel 4 news programme, and on every BBC web page — virtually every single day — for being a charisma-less, hopeless, and witless fool. But he has come through this burning fire, to nudge ahead of Phoney Tony in the polls, much to the incredulous bafflement of the New Labour-Guardian-BBC aristocracy, which rules this once glorious, and sceptred isle.
It’s a fragile lead, admittedly, and there’s still a lot more work for IDS to finish, to cement it in; even assuming it’s not Gordon Brown who ends up as the initial beneficiary, from Tony’s fall; and yes, it’s a shame about that bovine statism, inherent within the general Tory Party; and yes, I would prefer a straight decision to just get out of the EU Dodge City, right now. But on the topic of Iain Duncan Smith, army officer and gentleman; I am a believer.
The French and German ministers recently tasked with boosting bilateral cooperation have already agreed on one important point – the need for summer crash courses to learn each other’s language. French European Affairs Minister Noelle Lenoir and her German counterpart Hans-Martin Bury said each would spend part of their holidays in the other’s country sweating over grammar rules and vocabulary lists.
They met to prepare an October conference bringing together the heads of France’s 22 regions and Germany’s 16 federal states to discuss boosting cooperation in education, culture, economic development and environmental issues. Lenoir told journalists in French after talks with Bury:
German must gradually become almost as widely spoken and as easily spoken as English is today.
Heh.
I suppose that, one way or another, this will all get smoothed out in the long run but, nonetheless, we can enjoy it while it lasts:
Gerhard Schroder, the German chancellor, called off his summer holiday to Italy yesterday, as the worsening row between the countries began to unravel years of carefully orchestrated co-operation at the heart of Europe.
More and faster, please.
We’re all familiar with the popular cartoon caricature of Americans as gun-crazy cowboys who would shoot you as soon as look at you and peaceful, sophisticated, post-history Europeans who only need their directives to keep them safe from harm. In fact, I have lost count of the number of sneering British lefty journalists who prefix every reference to Americans with the words ‘gun-toting’ as a means of driving home the impression that they are dangerous, violent, atavistic non-communautaire people.
True? Well, probably not:
“Contrary to the common assumption that Europeans are virtually unarmed, an estimated 84 million firearms are legally held in the 15 member states of the EU. Of these, 80 per cent – 67 million guns – are in civilian hands,”
Good gracious! And to think that Tony Blair wants political union with these gun-loving maniacs!
Finland, with its strong hunting tradition, has the most legally registered guns in the EU at 39 per 100 people, the UK has 10 – one third of the German and French figures – and the Netherlands has two. Gun laws are tightest in the UK, the Netherlands and Poland, while France has more legal handguns than the Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, England, Wales and Scotland combined.
Just one quibble: there are no legally held handguns in the UK at all so maybe France is not quite as awash with hand cannons as the article would suggest. Nonetheless it is clear that most Europeans have not, in fact, been gripped by the same anti-gun hysteria that has swept over Britain.
On this day, nearly two hundred years ago, the artillery, cavalry and red coated infantry of Britain, along with their Dutch and Prussian allies, finally put an end to the tyrannical rule of Napoleon Bonaparte on the Belgian wheat fields of Waterloo, near Brussels. It was the Duke of Wellington’s greatest triumph.
Given that this blog is of course, such a great fan of the French political class (heh), I trust no readers of this publication would be so vulgar and unsophisticated to point out this salient historical anniversary to their friends and colleagues today.
I just thought you would like to have this titbit of historical information, gentle reader.
“Up Guards, and at ’em!”
– Wellington, June 18th 1815
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