Samizdata

At last, a blow is being struck for truth, justice and equality:

Gingerism in the workplace could form the basis of formal grievances or constructive dismissal cases, an employment lawyer has warned. The news comes in the wake of one Newcastle family having to move house because of abuse about its members’ red hair.

The Chapman family has moved home three times in three years in the Newcastle area because of abuse directed at its six red-haired members. Kevin Chapman told reporters that his 11-year-old son even attempted suicide after becoming depressed following years of abuse.

The story has led to speculation about whether insults over red hair could have the same legal status as insults regarding a person’s race or gender.

This country is plagued with ugly and unchecked gingerism which is completely unacceptable in a multi-folicle society. According to scientifically-proven statistics more than 100% of ginger-haired people die before the age of 6 due to ruthless oppression and rampant pilophobia. This has serious repercussions for their future employment and housing prospects. This is the worst problem facing the world today and it is high time that the politicians did something to combat it. Hirsuitism must stop. Full stop.

I do not have any time for Scientology (bunch of total loons, judging from their stated beliefs). I am not a fan of religion, full stop. Believing that one’s sins get removed on account of a guy who was tortured and killed by Romans, or believing that we come back on this Earth as animals, or get something called Karma, or Original Sin, are just so much rubbish to me. I do not think life lacks meaning without some Supreme Being. But then plenty of highly intelligent folk believe in these things, and pose no threat to me, nor do their adherents expect me to support their views. For me, tolerance is what counts.

Even so, religions, certainly those which make enormous claims about the world and arguably, mess up the lives of the people they influence, deserve to be scrutinised hard. For that reason, I watched the BBC ‘Panorama’ show on Monday and I must admit that it was a pretty compelling bit of television. The journalist who completely lost his temper with some very dubious characters from the Scientology outfit has my sympathy (yes, I am sympathising with a BBC journalist). These folk are jerks, and employ tactics that, as the journalist said, would not be the usual operating procedure of your average Anglican vicar.

On a lighter note, here is a reference to the classic South Park episode on Scientology.

I was struck by this interesting spin appearing in a BBC news report (not the BBC’s fault, they just printed what the spokesman said):

The Commons public accounts committee, headed by Edward Leigh MP, said urgent action was needed to ensure an adequate service was provided.

Its report said the electronic patient clinical record, central to the project, was already two years late.

But the government said the MPs’ report was based on out-of-date information.

Does this mean the system is less late than it was, and that time flows backwards in the NHS? No. Not even the current administration would try to sell that.

Has it been completed in the meantime? No. Limited trials begin in Bolton sometime soon (so Lancastrians in particular should attempt to opt-out while they can).

Does it mean there will be more up-to-date information presented by the government to prove the committee wrong? No. The government resists providing information about ongoing projects as much as it can, even to the public accounts committee. Giving out detailed evidence voluntarily (let alone in a checkable form) is unknown.

What it means is the government wishes you wouldn’t pay attention to the committee report at all, and wants you to believe it is of no value. Since the committee relies entirely on material presented by the government, simply saying it is wrong presents some problems. That might be taken as admitting government numbers are unreliable. But by saying “out-of-date”, it implies some fault in the committee without specifying quite what. You are invited to believe its conclusions are not valid and discount everything it says on that basis.

I wish I could play the piano well. What skill that you lack do you most wish you possessed?

After global warming, what will be the next hysteria?

Just thought I would share an extract from a letter I wrote to someone asking if I was ant-war or not:

Not all the contributors to Samizdata support the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not an ‘editorial policy’. Some of us do and some of us do not.

I am no more anti- or pro-war than I am anti- or pro-knife. It rather depends what it is used for. There are justified wars and there are unjustified wars and in this imperfect world in which we live there are wars which are shades of both.

I am not a neo-con who supports anything the US or UK state does overseas because it is the US or UK state doing it. I spent a considerable time in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990’s observing the war there at very close quarters indeed. That experience well and truly cured me of any residual pacifism or squeamishness about the fact there are many truly evil people in this world who need to be confronted with violence. In fact there are some people with whom the only reasonable form of interaction is to put 8 grams of copper jacketed metal through their skulls at 710 metres per second.

However I suspect that is not what you are asking me…if you want to know do I have a problem with just shrugging my shoulders at the fact a homicidal mass murdering tyrant with a history of invading neighbouring countries had controlled Iraq for two decades with some help from my tax money … well, I do have a problem with that and so I did support the drastic remedial action of ejecting Saddam by force on the basic and rather non-purist notion “the bastards are going to tax me to fund the volunteer military regardless, it might as well be used for something that actually reduces the sum total of evil in the world even though that is going to be messy as hell”.

Afghanistan on the other hand was a no-brainer: the Taliban governed state supported a direct attack on the USA, ergo the Afghan state was the one who actually initiated the war, not the USA.

Unlike many, I did not expect the aftermath in either Iraq or Afghanistan to be pretty but I did not (and still do not) see that as an excuse for giving the Ba’athists a free pass to keep gassing entire villages and feeding people they do not like into wood-chippers feet first.

Ideally the Iraqis themselves should have done for Saddam, but of course when they tried immediately after Gulf War Episode I, the wonderful George Bush senior left them hanging out to dry after having previously openly encouraged them.

So yes, I supported the war in Iraq (for rather different reasons to the US and UK govts, it must be said) because I find nothing libertarian about drowning out the screams of two decades of tortured Iraqis by holding a couple copies of Murray Rothbard’s ‘The Ethics of Liberty’ over my ears.