Three years ago yesterday.
Found via Some Welder on Twitter, from whom I also borrowed the title of this post.
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I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you… that the communist BLM organisation supports the Communist Cuban government’s repression of protests. July 15th, 2021 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Reuters tell us that Argentine leader Alberto Fernandez says he tests positive for the coronavirus… He is white, male, 62 years old and he says he is in good health. He is the national leader, so presumably lives in a nice post code. Sounds like he has exactly the same risk profile as me (well, other than the national leader bit. If I was the UK’s national leader, there would scarcely be an unoccupied lamppost in Westminster). So, using the Oxford University Covid-19 risk calculator, what chance does Alberto Fernandez have of snuffing it? Presumably the same as me if I get infected; which I did in March 2020 (spoiler – I am not posting this via Ouija board from beyond. Two weeks in bed, ten days more to get smell and taste back, done.). Therefore, unless he is telling porkies about being in otherwise good health:
In other words, I do not give a damn that the leader of Argentina has covid-19, and frankly neither should Alberto Fernandez. The only thing newsworthy about this article is that the utter scrotes who run Reuters want you to think this is newsworthy. I urge everyone to use the Oxford University Covid-19 risk calculator and share your figures. Get your friends, family, co-workers, neighbours, even your enemies, to do likewise. Maybe, just maybe, your enemy will figure out you are not the one they should be annoyed at after all. Get an informed idea if you are meaningfully at risk. And if you are, then you absolutely should isolate, protect yourself and take this seriously. But if not, and you do not live with anyone who is seriously at risk… protest, argue, be difficult, make people demanding compliance work hard to force your compliance, organise covid speakeasy gatherings, send money to support Lockdown Sceptics and their ilk. Do something, almost anything is better than nothing, even if all you do is make it unmistakably clear that you are only complying due to coercion, in spite of thinking this whole thing is utter madness. And say it every time. Ask people if they have spent 60 seconds of their time to use the risk calculator, and if not, why not? Throw a brick through the Overton window. Stand the fuck up for yourself. April 3rd, 2021 | 73 comments - (Comments are closed)
I still fear, but my hopes have risen a little more. In the last 24 hours I have seen three tweets from the official Biden-Harris campaign that might have been designed to help Trump:
Tactically, posting this now is insane. Those who support open borders will know his last minute conversion as the pandering it is. Those who do not want open borders will see their fears proven.
Did they not see the Hunter Biden jokes coming?
The video includes the line “Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.” November 3rd, 2020 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
At CapX, James Bloodworth writes,
An article from last year written by Maria D. Garcia and Hugo Acha and published in the the Miami Herald tells an individual’s story:
September 26th, 2020 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
As in we would have had it. 15 November 2019:
28 May 2020:
May 30th, 2020 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just to give a light tap to a small drum, which nobody else will tap if neither of us does, and just to say: fellow Samizdatista Patrick Crozier and I recently did one of our recorded-and-internetted conversations, this time about that strange event called in these parts: The Falklands War, which happened in early 1982. Listen to this by going here. Further thoughts about this historical event and this conversation from me here. (See also an earlier posting I did, about a very strange British public personality who emerged onto British TV during that war.) Somewhat inconveniently, for many, our conversation does rather go on a bit, for over an hour. But I have recently been finding myself spending what used to be my television time instead listening to things not unlike these conversations that Patrick and I have taken to doing – podcasts, YouTubery and so forth (many of these things involving Dave Rubin (a recent discovery of mine)). So I thought it worth mentioning our effort(s) here. February 27th, 2020 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Is the challenge from YT Vlogger ‘bald and bankrupt‘, in this video, filmed recently in Cuba. ‘bald’ as he is referred to, appears to be a chap from Brighton (if you watch his oeuvre) who walks around various parts of our Earth and makes short documentaries about what he sees. He speaks fluent Russian (it seems to me, and his former wife we have been told is Belarusian) but not such good Spanish, and his sidekick is a Belarusian woman who does speak enough Spanish to get by and who interprets for him. He presents Cuba by the simple device of walking around and going into several retail outlets to show what is on offer, and it looks pretty grim. He also talks to locals, most of whom seem well-drilled in what to say about the Revolution and to profess their loyalty to Fidel. He notes that everyone seems to want to escape. There is an unresolved side-issue of an abandoned kitten in the video. And yet 10,000,000 people in the UK voted last December for a party just itching to get us to this economic state, without the sunshine. And in the USA, there seems to be far too much enthusiasm for socialism. Bald’s ‘back catalogue’ contains a great travelogue for much of the former USSR. Whilst he admires all things ‘Soviet’ in terms of architecture (there is a running ‘gag’ about his excitement at finding himself in a Soviet-era bus station, he does acknowledge the grim reality of Soviet rule. February 19th, 2020 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
The report is from an (understandably!) anonymous informant, h/t instapundit, who comments,
(The BBC covered it yesterday but it’s off their website frontpage today and searching ‘Mexico’ doesn’t find it – you have to know the story specifics to find it.) We want a less open border with the EU, but I have to admit this kind of thing makes the Calais camp, and even Merkel’s million, look tame by comparison. October 21st, 2019 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is untrue that the fires are historically huge or unprecedented. NASA says the Amazon fires are ‘slightly below average this year’. Many are pointing out that we are witnessing the highest number of fires in the Amazon for seven years. But as meteorologist Jesse Ferrell reports, prior to 2012 there were many years in which the Amazon had worse fires than this year’s: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2010. As Ferrell says, there are always fires on Earth: ‘Thousands of fires are continually burning across the Earth every day of every year, and they always have.’ The idea that what is currently happening in the Amazon is shockingly unusual or apocalyptic or proof of man’s fascistic disdain for his environment is an entirely politicised interpretation of a perfectly normal event. August 30th, 2019 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Mr Ed: This post is made on behalf of Paul Marks, the Sage of Kettering, as he appears to have some issues with posting. I have put my pennyworth in. Centuries ago the Kings of Spain forbad landlords to remove tenants at the end of their tenancy contract (at least in Castile) – the Kings wanted to be seen as the “friends of the poor”. This was the true start of the decline of Castile and it spread to Latin America – where landlords just became interested in collecting-the-rent rather than improving their estates (as it was not lawful for them to remove tenants). Soon rents became “customary” – fixed under the “just price” doctrine, close kin of the “fair wage” doctrine. Spain and Latin America lagged behind the Common Law world not because Spanish is somehow an inferior language to English – but because Spanish law became inferior to the Common Law which was based upon Freedom-of-Contract not “Social Justice” with its “just price”, “fair wage” and “security of tenure” (regardless of contract). The government of British Prime Minister Theresa May now seeks to copy the “Spanish Practices” of centuries ago – by making contracts meaningless. For example, if a tenant can not be removed after the term of their contract (their tenancy) is over then only a fool would let out a property in the first place. What is intended to “reduce homelessness” will end up increasing it. Mr Ed: This piece on Conservativehome sets out the aptly-named Secretary of State’s view, Mr Brokenshire, he is indeed going to scour the Shires, and the towns and cities too. Someone said rent control was the second-surest way to destroy a city after carpet bombing.
The legal position (England and, I think, Wales but it may be devolved) is not set out very well in the piece, so the explanation on the government’s website is here. Basically, the legal mechanism is a Section 21 notice, whereby a property owner can evict a tenant after a 6-month tenancy has ended, i.e. it has run its minimum term, or when it is of indefinite duration. This is to be abolished, leaving in place the much less effective Section 8 Notice, whereby tenants can play cat-and-mouse by not paying rent, then paying arrears and stopping an eviction, amongst other things. Bastiat’s ‘What is seen and what is not seen’ might seem to be the issue here, but I fear that there are those who will not ‘see’ when it does not suit them, and unlike Nelson, it is from cowardice and calculation. Of course, if the Sage is right, Mrs May is making England that little bit more like Venezuela, singeing Mr Corbyn’s beard and stealing his clothes. April 15th, 2019 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
After years of having their dignity drained from them by corrupt, ruthless and cold men, Venezuelans are now fighting for their freedom and demanding an end to an illegitimate regime. They know what so many in this country do not, which is that Venezuela has, indeed, shown the world that another way is possible. It has exposed to the world an inhumane dictatorship whose coercive ideology has brought brutality, mass poverty, disease, and tremendous suffering to its people. And the name for that system? As Mr Corbyn told us himself, it’s called socialism. – Conservative MP Priti Patel All that the socialists now have to agree about is at what point real socialism in Venezuela was abandoned, betrayed, done wrong, blah blah. Kristian Niemietz is good on this subject. His point being, as explicated in this IEA podcast, that if real socialism was supposedly driven off a cliff by bad or stupid people, its inherent tendency to slide towards and then go over that cliff, no matter who is driving, need not be faced. January 28th, 2019 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
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