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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Of course, when I say that that is what Strathclyde Fire and Rescue (“making our communities safe places to live work and visit”) preferred, I do acknowledge it cannot have been pleasant to sit around listening to her desperate cries for the last six hours of her life while rescue equipment that could have brought her out from the mine shaft into which she had fallen stood inactive. But it was that or disregard a memo.
According to the Times,
An injured woman lay for six hours at the foot of a disused mine shaft because safety rules banned firefighters from rescuing her, an inquiry heard yesterday. As Alison Hume was brought to the surface by mountain rescuers she died of a heart attack.
A senior fire officer at the scene admitted that crews could only listen to her cries for help, after she fell down the 60ft shaft, because regulations said their lifting equipment could not be used on the public. A memo had been circulated in Strathclyde Fire and Rescue stations months previously stating that it was for use by firefighters only.
Tough call. We must hope that the eighteen firefighters present (according to an account in the Scotsman) supported each other.
I am a little confused by the fact that the this rope equipment was specified for use by firefighters only. I suppose this restriction is to avoid untrained people being rescued.
Friday’s debate at the RI turned into a soggy mess of a love-in, but it held no comfort for alarmists. The very limited point of discussion was “Has Global Warming increased the toll of disasters?” Audience members repeatedly asked where the points of difference among the three speakers lay, and they were certainly hard to see. Everyone seemed to agree that the answer to the discussion question was a clear and resounding “there is no evidence for that whatever.”
The speakers were Roger Pielke Jr, of the University of Colorado, Robert Muir-Wood of the consultancy Risk Management Solutions, and Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute at the LSE. The meeting was chaired by the amiable James Randerson of the Guardian (standing in for David Shukman of the BBC). He polled the audience beforehand on whether we believed that global warming had indeed increased the toll of disasters, a question that had apparently been dumped on him by someone else. After a hilarious quarter of an hour of having the question taken apart by stroppy audience members, who wanted to know whether by answering it they were committed to belief in warming, he finally had to force a vote. Most were don’t-knows. At the end of the discussion, when the same vote was taken, many of the don’t-knows had switched to the ‘no increasing cost’ position; they could not really do anything else, on the evidence presented. → Continue reading: Non-rumble at the RI
The week resumes after a highly enjoyable and stimulating annual Libertarian Alliance conference, which I attended along with one or two other members of the Samizdata crew, such as Brian Micklethwait. I may put together some more considered thoughts about some of the ideas and issues that arose over the past two days, but for now, let me join in congratulating Antoine Clarke – another occasional Samizdata writer – for picking up a deserved literary prize, and also Tim and Helen Evans and Sean Gabb, for putting this event together. What was encouraging was how we had delegates from all over the globe, with plenty of new, young faces.
One of the best sessions was the final one, in which we were treated to a survey of how the UK public actually thinks about banking and the credit crisis. The results, as Antoine himself suggested, might show that people are far less naive in believing fashionable nonsense about financial affairs than politicians assume. It would be nice to think that whenever some warmed-up Keynesian goes on about “quantitative easing”, the response from Joe Public is to roll the eyes.
The conference also featured a highly entertaining post-dinner speech by Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes. As Paul noted, it is galling that the word “freedom” is conspicuously absent from the rhetoric of any of the main party leaders in the UK. The same, for that matter, can be said of those in countries such as the US.
Here is a story suggesting that employees might use the outbreak of swine flu as an excuse to extend their summer holidays. I guess this is inevitable, given that some people will try anything on, although in a recession, it does seem rather dumb for staff to risk a disciplinary warning or outright sacking to lie about their health in this way.
Talking of holidays, in a few days’ time, yours truly is heading off to Normandy, northern France, for a week’s holiday with family, including, I am very happy to say, my father, who has recently made a recovery from a serious illness.
There will be lots of Calvados consumed. My blogging is likely to be slow next week.
It will be tough to follow what was a great event last year, with speakers such as David Friedman – but this year’s Libertarian Alliance annual conference, on 24-25 October in London, promises to be a good one. I have just been sent the agenda and list of speakers, including Tibor Machan, the US philosopher (one of my favourites), Richard Wellings of the IEA, Jan Lester and Chris Mounsey (aka The Devil’s Kitchen). Book early to avoid disappointment.
Good on the Libertarian Alliance for publishing this. As it says, Guido Fawkes, aka Paul Staines, is more than able to take care of himself, but given some pathetic attempts by the Daily Telegraph and a few others to sneer at him (what the heck has gone wrong at the Telegraph?), it is nice to have friendly comments.
Paul has probably raised the profile of the LA indirectly, quite a bit. He should get an award at this year’s annual LA conference. Even if it is not the whole truth, I think it is very, very good to be able to have it said that a “libertarian blogger has brought down minister X or civil servant Y”. The very fact that folk are going around saying this, or hinting at it, is gold-dust to libertarian activitsts such as the LA and its counterparts. In his way, Paul is doing for the free market movement what the Tea Party folks are doing, maybe, in the US. In fact, I’d be willing to state that relatively speaking, Paul’s site is now the most influential political blog in the world. I mean, is there a French, German or, heaven help us, an Italian equivalent?
Just askin’.
Reported by Lucy Bannerman in today’s Times:
Fire kills child, 3, and parents as police prevent neighbours from trying to rescue them
A pregnant woman, her husband and their three-year-old son were killed in a house fire early yesterday as police who arrived before the fire brigade prevented neighbours from trying to save them. The woman screamed: “Please save my kids” from a bedroom window and neighbours tried to help but were beaten back by flames and were told by police not to attempt a rescue.
By the time firefighters got into the house in Doncaster, Michelle Colly, 25, her husband, Mark, 29, and son, Louis, 3, were dead. Their daughter, Sophie, 5, was taken to hospital and believed to be critically ill.
Davey Davis, 38, a friend of the family, said: “It was the most harrowing thing I have ever witnessed. Michelle was at the bedroom window yelling, ‘Please save my kids’ and we wanted to help but the police were pushing us back and not allowing us near. We were willing to risk our lives to save those kiddies but the police wouldn’t let us.
“Tempers were running very high, particularly with the women who were there, but the police were just saying we have to wait for the fire brigade because of health and safety.
“There were four or five police officers. They were here before the fire brigade. We heard the sirens and we came across to help but they wouldn’t let us.
“I thought the police were there to protect lives. At one time they would have have gone inside themselves to try and rescue them.
“When a family is burning to death in front of your eyes, rules should go out of the window – especially with kids. Everybody wanted to try and help.”
In a previous post about loss of nerve in our public services I said, referring to instances in which firemen and policemen had “broken procedure” to save life, that despite their personal courage “institutional gutlessness surrounded them, was embarrassed by them, and will kill off their like eventually. Poisoned soil does not long give forth good fruit.”
Seems like the poison has worked its way well in. Note: I do not know whether the Colly family could have been saved had the attempt been made while Mrs Colly was still alive to scream for someone to save her kids. A spokeswoman for the South Yorkshire Police said, “The senior officer in charge is confident we handled this incident as professionally as possible. In a situation like that you could end up with more deceased bodies than you had in the first place.”
One of the lesser known sights of London is the Watts Memorial in Postman’s Park. I gather it featured in the film Closer, starring Natalie Portman and Jude Law. No, I am not being funny, suddenly veering off into a travelogue in the middle of a post about the deaths of a family. I wish there were something to laugh about. The memorial was set up by a Victorian artist, George Frederick Watts, to commemorate those who died saving others. It consists of hand made plaques each bearing the name of a person who sacrificed his or her life and a brief citation. Very quaint they are, with their crowded lettering with the extra-large initial capitals and little swirly plant motifs and curlicues in the corners. Even the names are quaint, laboriously given in full. Police Constables Percy Edwin Cook, Edward George Brown Greenoff, Harold Frank Ricketts and George Stephen Funnell are among them. I wonder what PC Percy Edwin Cook, for instance, who perished when he “Voluntarily descended high tension chamber at Kensington to rescue two workmen overcome by poisonous gas” would have made of his successors in the South Yorkshire force.
Perhaps the police spokeswoman was right. Perhaps if health and safety had been less comprehensively assured and the Colly incident handled rather less professionally, we would have ended up with more than the three “deceased bodies” – no, make that four, when you count the child expected to be born in two weeks – that we did end up with. Still, more than four dead bodies is quite a lot and quite unlikely, I cannot help thinking. And I also cannot help thinking that there is more to this than just counting the dead under different scenarios. If the critically injured five year old girl does survive she will be burdened by more than just the fact that her family died. She will eventually have to know that those who might have answered her mother’s last desperate appeal were held back on grounds of “health and safety.” Not theirs, obviously.
UPDATE: Other accounts give the spelling of the family name as “Colley”. They confirm that the police actively prevented rescue attempts.
FURTHER UPDATE: There is a thoughtful discussion in the comments regarding several moral and practical questions, and whether the press accounts are to be trusted. Quite possibly not. Yet I must add that if the South Yorkshire police are trying to convince me that they are not abdicating responsibility in order to follow rote “health and safety” procedure (as commenter “sjv” put it), then best not claim, as they appeared to in the Mail report linked to in the word “other”, that the reason they will not tell us exactly how long elapsed between the arrival of the police and the arrival of the firemen is “‘data protection’ rules.”
There are so many things to do these days, especially in a place like London, that often you make up your mind about what to do of an evening at the very last moment. So, maybe you have the coming Tuesday evening, tomorrow, March 17th, still free. If you do, I strongly recommend the Libertarian Alliance’s 2nd Annual Chris R. Tame Memorial Lecture, which this year will be given by Professor Kevin Dowd.
Getting on for a hundred people have already signed up to attend this event, in other words quite a few more than showed up for last year’s inaugural Chris Tame lecture given by David Myddleton. But there is room for more still. Attendance is free of charge. All the organisers ask is, if you want to be there, email them beforehand. Follow the link at the top of this for all the details of the event, and for the email to confirm attendance.
What excites me about this lecture is that Dowd is both an unswerving libertarian, and an expert on banking, on the history of banking and on the baleful effects over the decades of state monopoly fiat money and of banking regulation. This is a man who not only believes in the idea of a free market in currencies and in banking, but someone who can actually explain in detail why that would be a better arrangement than anything else now being proposed. He also has firm and positive views about what should immediately be done, right now, to alleviate the crisis. And because he is a Professor, he has some leverage for getting his ideas reported in the mainstream media.
Having been looking forward to this event for several months, I now realise that I have, infuriatingly, a teaching commitment set in concrete for that very same evening. But the good news for me, and for anyone else who won’t be able to attend the lecture in person, is that it will be videoed, and video internetted just as soon as that can be contrived. You may depend upon me to have further things to say about this potentially very important lecture just as soon as that video is available and linkable to.
Can we win the ideological war that now swirls about the current financial catastrophes? Personally I remain optimistic about this possibility, but whether we can actually win or not, we should surely try to win. And those of us who conveniently can should surely support those people, like Kevin Dowd, who are making the biggest efforts to this end. Most of Samizdata’s readers do not live in London and can’t be at this lecture in person, although lots are Londoners and could. But, Londoners or not, I very much hope that a healthy proportion of us will at least give the video our closest attention. Meanwhile, I am sure that almost all of you will join with me in wishing Professor Dowd all the best for tomorrow evening.
Jonah Goldberg, who writes at the US conservative publication, National Review – and other places – is over in the UK next week talking about his recently-published book, Liberal Fascism. I have not read it but some of the readership might find it interesting. He’s in London at venues like the London School of Economics.
Meanwhile, as our own Brian Micklethwait pointed out the other day on his own blog, Kevin Dowd, an economist very much in the free market camp and an authority of monetary economics, is delivering the annual Chris R. Tame memorial lecture of the Libertarian Alliance in March. Kevin Dowd is not just a very nice fellow and a sharp economist, he is also an advocate of free banking and a critic of state monopoly money. He and his colleagues have been doing important research on the topic up in his academic redoubt in Nottingham. I definitely recommend this lecture. It pays to book early.
During the recent LA/LI Conference, Sean Gabb, half of the two-man team that now runs the Libertarian Alliance (Tim Evans being the other half) sat himself down next to me and asked me to suggest good speakers for next year. My best two suggestions were two Michaels.
Michael Jennings will be well-known to regular readers here as an expert on technological trends and much else besides. He would be exactly the kind of second-tier speaker, and I mean this in no disrespectful way, who maybe isn’t a superstar name who would cause dozens more attendees to sign up in the first place, but who would add greatly to the enjoyment and enlightenment of the event for all who did attend. Technology, I am sure you will agree, can be relied upon to keep on supplying interesting trends for someone like Michael to talk about.
And the other Michael I suggested was Michael O’Leary, the boss of Ryanair. Okay, definitely a first-tier speaker, but equally definitely a long shot. But what’s the worst he can say? No, too busy running Britain’s largest low fares airline, you can afford my air fares but not me but the best of luck anway being what he probably would say, if anything, if asked.
Ryanair press releases are actually fun to read (like some of Sean Gabb’s, come to think of it). Here is a typically populist and opportunistic snippet from the latest one:
Ryanair, Britain’s largest low fares airline, today (31st Oct) offered to rescue Jonathan Ross after he was ‘Sent to Coventry’ by the bigwigs at the BBC. Ryanair will help Ross jet off to much more exotic surrounds as it sent him free tickets to escape the media spotlight and sample how those who don’t earn £18million a year live.
Ryanair, called on the black sheep of the BBC, who will lose £1.5million over the next 12 weeks, to make his money go further by escaping the high cost of living in Mayfair and fly on one of Ryanair’s over 350 UK routes where he can live cheaper, get a tan and gear himself up for his return to the beeb next year.
Does Coventry have an airport, I wonder?
O’Leary’s open contempt for state monopolies of all kinds, but especially in the airline business (on the ground and in the air), is most pleasing. A growing trend in public opinion, especially since this latest wall-of-taxpayer-money bailout of dodgy banks, is the alignment of enthusiasm for free markets with populism, while statist solutions to problems are becoming regarded more and more as elitist manipulations, the rich helping themselves to public money on scale that the poor could never dream of. O’Leary feeds into that current, I think, especially in the way he bangs on about how much more you often have to pay the government, when you fly Ryanair, than you have to pay him.
Michael Jennings, constant globetrotter that he is, could doubtless tell libertarians about the impact of low fare airlines on the world, even if Michael O’Leary is otherwise engaged.
I too was at the LA/LI Conference held at the National Liberal Club over this weekend, which was excellent, as Johnathan has just said. The organisation of this now solidly annual event was indeed the best yet.
Not everybody likes the star system, but reality does not care what you think of it. The dumb fact is that certain people, in the libertarian world as in all other human milieus, put bums on seats. Other performers, however excellent, can contribute mightily to the success of an event like this – our own Guy Herbert, who spoke most eloquently on the Sunday afternoon about the Database State, springs to mind – but such lesser luminaries do not each cause another three dozen people to show up in the first place, having booked encouragingly early.
The arrival in our midst of David Friedman (talking about this) was nevertheless a stroke of luck, conferred by Friedman himself, next to whom I sat at the Saturday dinner. I’m afraid he was too tired from travelling and speaking at other events, and I too star-struck, for our conversation to amount to much, but he did tell me that he was at the conference because he had already semi-booked to do another talk nearby, in Germany or some such place, and he would only agree to do that if he could achieve economies of scale by giving a handful of other talks on the same trip. So, he contacted the Libertarian Alliance and asked if they’d like him to speak at this conference. Oh, I imagine we could just about squeeze you in, they replied. All of which reminds me of that remark by the golfer Gary Player, to the effect that the more work he did, the more luck he had.
I hope I will have more to say here about what was actually said at this gathering, but in the meantime, first impressions first: like JP said, it was a good show.
One of the reasons for slow output on this blog over the weekend was that several of your regular scribes, such as yours truly, Guy Herbert, Brian Micklethwait and Philip Chaston, were at the annual Libertarian Alliance (UK) conference in London. Several of us remarked on how many people turned up for the two days. By my reckoning, we had about 140 folk in total. What was particularly gratifying was the number of younger people in their early 20s whom I had never heard of before. Several of the newbies mentioned that they had come across the LA via the world of blogs. This is encouraging: there is nothing more dispiriting than to observe that the circle of folk who share similar views is static and getting greyer and more wrinkled. Suddenly, that appears to be changing.
There may have been several reasons why the LA conference proved so successful in terms of numbers. First of all, the speaker list was particularly strong: Aubrey de Grey, David Friedman and Hans-Herman Hoppe, to name just three. I thought Professor Friedman (son of Milton Friedman) was terrific when he spoke about how new technologies, such as nanotech, artificial intelligence and new forms of encryption, would throw up all manner of new legal issues. He is an irrepressible speaker and great value. Another reason for the high numbers at the conference is that I wonder whether the credit crunch has produced an unintended result by refocusing attention on the arguments about capitalism and financial markets. People want to know about what defenders of laissez faire think. Quite a few of the attendees were students furiously writing stuff down for assignments. The LA is getting used as a resource for academics.
I came home from the event yesterday feeling enthused and proud of how Tim Evans and Sean Gabb have driven the LA forward after the sad loss of Chris Tame, its founder, more than two years ago. He’d have been very proud, I have no doubt.
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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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