For those of you who have been following the story of the Pakistan born ex-Muslim blogger ‘Isaac Schrödinger’ who has been seeking asylum in Canada, I am delighted to report a very happy ending.
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January 5th, 2007 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
 Michael Totten has written a couple very interesting articles called Hezbollah’s Putsch and Hezbollah’s Christian Allies. Well worth checking out as you just do not see stuff like this in the mainstream media all too often. Also consider dropping your mouse on his PayPal donations button to support his excellent international reportage. December 31st, 2006 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
From all of us at Samizdata, to all of you, our loyal readers and commenters, a very Merry Christmas! December 25th, 2006 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
A large contingent of Samizdatistas were seen making merry and getting blotto at the party of a certain Reuters journalist tonight. As Christmas party season is in full cry, blogging may be a bit… sporadic… over the next few days. December 22nd, 2006 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Apologies for not flagging up sooner that I recently had a recorded conversation about Samizdata with Perry de Havilland. It took me over a week to edit the thing, by which I mean over a week to get around to stitching the two chunks it happened in together (I find everything involving computers to be hard until I know how to do it). And after posting about it on my blog, it has taken me another two days to mention it here. I had a busy weekend. But the mills of Samizdata grind small, and slowly. A week and a half’s delay will make no huge difference to the big picture, or to the meta-context as Perry likes to call it. Anyway, click here to have a listen. It lasts about forty minutes. Our conversation reminded me of something I first heard myself say to Madsen Pirie a long time ago, in the old Alternative Bookshop. What will this achieve? – said Madsen, waving some pamphlet I had just done in my face. I replied: “In the short run, nothing. In the long run, everything.” Samizdata is like that. Jackie D liked it too. Today, assuming the plan goes according to plan, I will be doing another of these things, with Alex Singleton, about… Gilbert and Sullivan. There is more to life than what governments do. December 18th, 2006 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Hosting company ‘Watching America’ are currently under a sustained (two days and counting) denial-of-service attack and as a result various blogs may be hard or impossible to access as a result. Consider this a public service announcement. Methinks some lynchings are in order. December 17th, 2006 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
I had the pleasure of meeting U.S. blogger Stephen Green, of the excellently entitled Vodkapundit, a few months ago at a party in London. Stephen has been ill, lost a lot of weight, and I must say I got quite concerned when he stopped posting. He now explains what has been going on. It looks as if the fella is going to be all right, which is terrific news for him and his wife and child. Feel free to nip over to his site and give him your best wishes. I am looking forward to the Colorado Scribe posting up more of those cocktail recipes again. Mine’s a gin and tonic. December 17th, 2006 | Comments are closed
Steve Edwards has administered a particularly welcome hatchet job on critical aspects of the ostensibly benevolent, world government-loving Bahá’í religion. Check the comments – the Bahá’í faithful have piled in. December 10th, 2006 | 55 comments - (Comments are closed)
I can not have been the only blog-reader who was struck last week by the difference between this from Iain Dale:
And this from Guido:
Because yes, it would seem that there is some funding scandal surrounding Mr Brown which is now coming to the boil. I think Guido wins. He does not deny the tragicness of the story. But, he notes the timing of the telling of it. He adds something. It is the full page spread in the Sun, which Guido reproduces, that clinches it for me. And in the unlikely event that it was coincidence, then I am afraid that this is not the kind of benefit of the doubt that most of us are any longer prepared to give to this government. December 2nd, 2006 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is extraordinary how people opine without understanding the subject. It seems like Mr. Toulmin understand nothing whatsoever about the internet. There is indeed a “form of redress for people angered at content” on blogs available and that is… blogs. It is extremely simple: go to blogger.com, spend about five minutes doing the ‘three easy steps’ and then start posting your rebuttals on your own damn blog. As for a voluntary code of conduct… I invite Tim Toulmin to ask his lawyer to write one down on a piece of paper, roll the document up tightly and then stick it wherever his lawyer’s imagination and Mr. Toulmin complacency will allow. I look forward to being told off for that remark when Tim Toulmin sets up his own blog. For another similar view to mine, see here. November 29th, 2006 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
I particularly like it when blogging is being done, or is about to be done, by people whom I know quite well. And my friend Helen Evans has just this very day started a blog about nursing, called the Nurses For Reform blog. That said, the prose style so far is rather corporate and armour-plated for my taste. However, despite the rather baffling word “contestability” – which is presumably some kind of Blairite code-word, for something or other – I think it is reasonably clear what is intended by the following:
That suggests to me something quite like free market medicine, and of course I am totally for that. This next bit is definitely about free market medicine:
This says stuff I agree with, but in the manner of a corporate mission statement, and I loath and detest nearly every corporate mission statement that I have ever encountered. Wouldn’t it be fun one day to read one of these things starting with something like: “We believe only in superficial change. Fundamentally, things should stay pretty much as they are.” And how about someone just occasionally admitting that he aims to supply an “unresponsive, unpopular” product or service? Many splendid tradespersons do just that and are richly rewarded. However, since this is a corporate mission statement, I really ought not to carp. And since this is medicine and nursing care in Britain that is being talked about, well, I admit it, I do believe in “fundamental change”. Nor can I reasonably object to the ambition that nurses should work, if at all possible, in a “sustainable environment”, nor to them delivering a “responsive, popular and truly high quality service”. To be more serious, I have quite often heard Helen Evans say, in the plainest of English, that one of the many problems of Britain’s National Health Service is that its nurses do not now have a proper career path in front of them. As soon as they get really good at their job, they tend to leave. The NHS has lost many of what would now be its NCOs, so to speak, good and experienced senior nurses being to hospitals what good and experienced sergeants are to armies. And where have they all gone? To get married, or to the private sector. When the postings at this new blog get more specific and personal, as I am sure many of them will, I will surely read them with interest and pleasure. There will be more links from here to there in the future, I promise you. November 1st, 2006 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Transport Blog is up and running again, and I have agreed once again to write bits for it, now and again. Specialist blogs like Transport Blog often get quite high traffic, provided everyone involved keeps at it. There are a lot of people in the world who are interested in and excited about transport, especially by trains, which just happen to be a particular interest of Transport Blog supremo Patrick Crozier. Almost everyone travels, or has travelled. Bloggers everywhere have the occasional moan about transport, and often also have stories to tell about how transport was good in one way or another, or about how it may soon be very exciting. So, emails to me or to Transport Blog itself (i.e. Patrick) about transport related stuff, either telling the story direct, or linking to where you or someone has already told it, will be most welcome. Transport Blog will, just as it did first time around, find a quite distinct readership to that which reads things like Samizdata. So it makes sense to have a little competition here, and for me now to promise to repost the best comment(s) on this posting here during the next twenty four hours, over to Transport Blog. Any good recent transport stories to tell? Terrible delays? Transport policy cock-ups? (Or triumphs?) Weird and wonderful pictures (a particular favourite with me – see below) of bizarre transport contraptions? Very nice transport experiences? Odd moments in transport history? Transport in odd places? It’s a delightfully vast subject.  October 25th, 2006 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
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