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Far leftists do not laugh to mock communism. They laugh to forget communism. They dismiss the mass murders, and the suppression of every right that makes life worth living with a giggle and a snort, and imply that you are a bit of a prude if you cannot do the same. Then they throw a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book across the chamber of the House of Commons and look round with utter bemusement when no one gets the gag. With thanks to Mick Hartley. November 26th, 2015 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The “safe spaces” that really matter now, after Paris and Mali, are the concert halls, restaurants, cinemas, hotels, workplaces and transportation systems of the free world. The ISIS-held towns and villages in the Middle East need to be liberated so that they might be safe for families to live in peacefully. The real “trigger warning” comes from the guns of those who shot peaceful people in Paris. Those students immersed in a self-indulgent merry go round of protest need to go back to their dorms, turn on the television, absorb what’s happening in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Europe and engage their brains. It is time to put away childish things. We are up against people who don’t want there to be any colleges, who want women to be clad head to toe in black, to barely if ever go outside and to be slaves of men. – Iain Martin, at the CapX website. November 23rd, 2015 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
A week ago, when 129 people in Paris were massacred as they went joyfully about their Friday nights, there were instant predictions of fury and instability. The cut-off commentariat in particular was worried that ‘ordinary people’ might turn Islamophobic. Hatred will spread ‘thick and fast’, said Scotland’s minister for Europe. Others fretted that there would be displays of jingoism, demands for revenge. Don’t agitate for a ‘clash of civilisations’, observers warned. One expert on international affairs even told us not to get angry, because ‘ISIS counts on anger… to advance its cause’. This elite panic about post-Paris rage spoke volumes about the anti-public mindset of Europe’s opinion-formers, who view us as volatile, easily turned from civilised creatures into warmongers. In the event, though, in the seven days since the massacres, something even worse than all that happened: nothing. There’s been no fury. No clamour for a fightback, whether of the militaristic or intellectual variety. November 21st, 2015 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Whatever its protestations, Corbyn’s far left is not anti-war. Pacifism may not be a moral position in all circumstances but, in my view at least, it remains an honourable belief, rooted in Christian teaching. Corbyn does not share it. He does not oppose violence wherever it comes from, as the BBC’s political editor claimed this week. When anti-western regimes and movements go to war, his language turns slippery. Corbyn never quite has the guts to support the violence of others, but he excuses it like a gangster’s lawyer trying to get a crime boss off on a technicality.” For what it is worth, I would not be surprised if this evil man is toppled in a few months, possibly if the May local elections in the UK are poor for Labour. And yes I used the word “evil” quite deliberately. That is what he is. Corbyn is a bad man to the core. November 20th, 2015 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Universities seem increasingly to focus on the so-called student experience over the students’ education, with universities putting huge resources into public relations, league tables and student surveys. University has become the place for teenagers to go when they wish to delay being an adult, rather than being the bridge to independence it was once considered to be. As someone who chose to leave university, it felt like I was simply putting my life on hold for three years, when I really wanted to jump into the world of work. This feeling was further enhanced by spending time on campus, where it felt like all students were being kept together and shielded from the outside world. November 19th, 2015 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
What do you want? – The Prisoner (intro written by George Markstein, as far as we know) [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zalndXdxriI&w=420&h=315]
November 17th, 2015 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’m surprised – I didn’t think we would see these calls for more unchecked government surveillance until the start of the new week. But hats off to Dan Hodges – by publicly freaking out in his newspaper column and calling for the Investigatory Powers Bill to be passed, he has opened the door for Theresa May, David Cameron and a parade of GCHQ ex-chiefs to hit the TV studios and make the same demands. Of course, what Dan does not do is explain how new government surveillance powers would a) have prevented the Paris attacks of 13 November, or b) might realistically prevent any future attacks. And if you pushed him, I doubt that he could explain the scope of current surveillance laws in any detail, or describe the ways that the British security services currently do or do not make use of those powers. November 15th, 2015 | 68 comments - (Comments are closed)
When Corbyn is challenged on his beliefs and his record, he tends to respond by characterising a political challenge as a personal attack. He treats it as intrusive, rude and vulgar. In so doing, he accomplishes three things. He paints himself as the innocent victim of unjust aggression; he avoids responding to the detail of the challenge; and he bolsters the distinction between the good people inside his tent and the bad people outside of it. Howard Jacobson writes: There was something ‘How very dare you’, about Jeremy Corbyn’s recent temper tantrum in rebuttal of the charge that the company he kept reflected badly on him. ‘The idea that I’m some kind of racist or anti-Semitic person is beyond appalling, disgusting and deeply offensive,’ he said (Jacobson 2015). ‘Alarm bells ring when a politician stands haughty upon his honour,’ observes Jacobson. When Jeremy says he doesn’t do personal what he means is that he will not deal with criticism in the normal way. He will not respond to it by means of reason or argument; he refuses to enter into serious engagement over worldviews, over ideas or over his record. He is less interested in trying to persuade than in making criticism appear as personal insult. ‘Jeremy doesn’t do personal’ does not mean that he refrains from insulting others; it means that he refrains from responding to that which he is able to construct as insulting. My thanks to the invaluable Mick Hartley for flagging up Hirsh’s paper, entitled “The Corbyn left: the politics of position and the politics of reason”. November 8th, 2015 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’d stick something on Samizdata if I wasn’t so worn out from laughing at these Million Mask March ‘anarchist’ wankers who want, well, government to do more stuff. – Perry de Havilland November 6th, 2015 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
If the Conservative Party really still believed in national sovereignty, a strong defence, smaller government, less regulation and helping people to improve their own circumstances, they would look at the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and the return of political ideology and see it as license to start espousing their own philosophy instead of continually apologising for their beliefs. That so many conservatives are desperate to stick to the centre ground and view Jeremy Corbyn as a clear and present threat to Britain says a lot more about the soft Right than it does about the Labour leadership candidate. November 5th, 2015 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Journos: UK officials don’t want to “ban encryption” — they want to ban encryption that *works*. November 4th, 2015 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
October 29th, 2015 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
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