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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Down with the hoarders!

· Environment · Historical views · Political Economy · UK affairs

Will Hutton: “Farmers have hoarded land for too long. Inheritance tax will bring new life to rural Britain”.

“Inheritance tax springs from the universally held belief that society has the right to share when wealth is transferred on death as a matter of justice.”

It is not universal.

“This is not confiscation, especially if the lion’s share of the bequest is left intact.”

It is confiscation.

“It is asking for a share.”

It is not asking.

November 19th, 2024 | 36 comments

Steve Baker interview on government debt and inflation

· Economics, Business & Globalization · UK affairs

I have not watched this yet. But I am certain it is worth watching.

Steve Baker on Why Government is Failing you Debt & Inflation Peter McCormack Podcast

In this episode, we discuss pressing economic and political issues such as the challenges of government debt, inflation, and the often overlooked consequences of central bank policies. With a focus on the impact of taxation and government spending on individual freedoms and economic productivity,. We also discuss the structural inefficiencies in politics and examine the growing disconnect between politicians and economic realities.

November 14th, 2024 | 2 comments

“It’s not the accuser, they’re called the victim.”

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Media & Journalism · Totalitarianism · UK affairs

Sometimes the journalist really is the story: “Telegraph journalist faces ‘Kafkaesque’ investigation over alleged hate crime”, reports the Telegraph.

A Telegraph journalist is facing a “Kafkaesque” investigation for allegedly stirring up racial hatred in a social media post last year.

Allison Pearson, an award-winning writer, has described how two police officers called at her home at 9.40am on Remembrance Sunday to tell her she was being investigated over the post on X, formerly Twitter, from a year ago.

In an article for The Telegraph, she said she was told by one officer that “I was accused of a non-crime hate incident. It was to do with something I had posted on X a year ago. A YEAR ago? Yes. Stirring up racial hatred apparently.”

When Pearson asked what she had allegedly said in the tweet, the officer said he was not allowed to disclose it. However, at this time last year, she was frequently tweeting about the October 7 attacks on Israel and controversial pro-Palestinian protests on the streets of London.

The officer also refused to reveal the accuser’s name. Pearson recalled: “‘It’s not the accuser,’ the PC said, looking down at his notes. ‘They’re called the victim.’”

An accused person is not told what crime they are alleged to have committed nor who is accusing them, but the police speak as if the crime is already proven. There was a time when Britain defined itself as a place where this could not happen.

Here is another account of the same events from GB News:

“Fury as police officers spend Remembrance Sunday knocking on journalist’s door over social media post: ‘A day celebrating freedom!’”

November 13th, 2024 | 22 comments

The Nazi menace did not end in 1945

· European affairs · Historical views · Middle East & Islamic · Self defence & Security · Totalitarianism · UK affairs

I wish I were only talking about this:

“Essex Police Issue Update After WWII Bomb Safely Detonated in East Tilbury”

(This Twitter thread by Tony Brown @agbdrilling shows detailed pictures of how the bomb was found and safely exploded under sand.)

But the thing uppermost in my mind was actually this:

“Amsterdam rioters ‘planned Jew hunt on Telegram’ before they attacked Israeli football fans”

November 10th, 2024 | 23 comments

Stop Dale Vince silencing critics of his Hamas comments

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Independent sites, Blogging & Bloggers · UK affairs

Dale Vince, the green oligarch and wind turbine tycoon, is suing Guido Fawkes for reporting what he said about Hamas on Times Radio when he compared the Hamas terrorists to freedom fighters.

Dismal tax trougher Vince is suing the editor Paul Staines personally for daring to publish the actual words Vince said in an interview with the Times Radio’s Stig Abell.

This is pure distilled lawfare and for the first time in 20 years Guido is asking contribution to their legals costs. As a longtime fan of Mr. Fawkes, I have chipped in and I urge anyone else who dislikes the Green Mafia to do likewise here.

November 7th, 2024 | 26 comments

Mugger? Not worth pursuing. Elderly litter-picker? We will track you down.

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · North American affairs · UK affairs

“Elderly litter picker who voluntarily cleans up local area fined for forgetting walking stick”, the Telegraph reports.

An elderly volunteer litter picker has been handed a fine for accidentally leaving his walking stick by the roadside.

Alan Davies was “shocked, angry and upset” to be penalised by Walsall Council when he forgot his cane in Aldridge, West Midlands, on Sept 6.

Mr Davies and his friends had been on their daily litter pick along Longwood Lane and Hayhead Wood.

The grandfather said he drove off, forgetting to pick up his walking stick and a bag with his cushion inside, which he had placed by the roadside.

Mr Davies claims Walsall Council tracked him down after trawling through local CCTV footage.

He said council officers found his address by using his car’s number plate and sent him the fine last week.

And this is typical:

Mr Davies’s neighbour Ann said: “£150 is a lot of money for a pensioner. You cannot speak to the council on the phone, it has to be [by] email. Not everyone has the internet. Hopefully when people realise what Alan is being put through the council will back down.”

In the end Walsall Council did rescind the fine, although the story does not say whether Mr Davies ever got his walking stick back.

Some aspects of this story reminded me of the raid a few days ago by multiple agents of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation on Mark and Daniela Longo’s home, which ended with the authorities killing a pet squirrel and raccoon. Why have officials in English-speaking countries become so sluggish in pursuing criminals but so dogged in the pursuit of harmless people? There has always been some incentive for cops and officials to go after someone who will not resist in preference to going after a criminal who might stab them, but why has it got so much worse in recent years? Perhaps it is because the number of bureaucrats has so multiplied that responsibility for a process is always divided.

November 5th, 2024 | 17 comments

“Engineer, hacker and Ron DeSantis fan: five things about Kemi Badenoch”

· UK affairs

I know, I know. That’s three things. But there are two more items listed later in Peter Walker’s article for the Guardian, which he probably thought of as a list of things not to like about the newly elected Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.

Although I have never called myself a Conservative, and have never joined a political party, I do like her. She is my local MP. I have written to her and got a reply that was clearly written with some thought. That is rare. Someone in my family used to be a member of the local Conservative party and I have met her several times at party events, at which she always came across as friendly and convivial. That said, I also like the fact that her smile is not jammed in the “on” position. In their current state the Tories need a leader who will fight – who “would cross the road to bite your ankles” as one of her admirers put it. Sir Keir Starmer had better put on thick socks.

Obviously, the incident in 2008 when Badenoch guessed the password of Harriet Harman’s website, hacked into it, and changed it to say that Harman had defected to the Tories and that everyone should vote for Boris Johnson as Mayor of London was an unspeakably wicked assault on Our Democracy and not funny at all.

November 2nd, 2024 | 34 comments

Samizdata quote of the day – Labour’s support is a mile wide and an inch deep

· Slogans & Quotations · UK affairs

Starmer entered office with “the lowest vote-share that a majority Westminster government has received since the introduction of universal suffrage”.

– Aris Roussinos

November 1st, 2024 | 16 comments

Samizdata quote of the day – the UK’s economic decline edition

· Economics, Business & Globalization · Slogans & Quotations · UK affairs

“Britain’s deluded politics are downstream of a deluded public. This country simply doesn’t realise how poor it is; the gulf between public expectations of the state and the state’s means of financing itself has widened to dangerous levels. People on relatively high incomes don’t feel rich and therefore assume that there are plenty of actually rich people who could be squeezed to pay for stuff. Entitlement spending, in particular, is eating British democracy alive. Council budgets are increasingly consumed by social care and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) spending, with services cut to the bone. Meanwhile in Westminster, successive governments continually forestall capital investment to avoid tinkering with absurd commitments such as the pension triple lock.”

– Henry Hill, writing about the UK Budget statement of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves. (For non-British readers who want to know what the “triple lock” is, it is a safeguard that ensures the state pension increases each year by the highest of three measures: Inflation: The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the previous September; Average earnings: The average increase in total wages across the UK for May to June of the previous year; and a minimum rise of 2.5%.)

I agree with Hill that many members of the public, and not just the chattering class, are so economically illiterate they have little idea of how screwed the UK is financially, given demography, state bloat, over-regulation and tax, and the rest. And anyone who pushes against it is one of those sinister people known as “neoliberals”.

October 30th, 2024 | 17 comments

An odd line to take

· Immigration · Middle East & Islamic · Religion · Transport · UK affairs

This video shows a group of women on a London tube train chanting, “Settlers, settlers, go back home, Palestine is not your home.” A minute later the racism is even more explicit. They chant, “Israel out of Palestine. Whities out of Palestine’”.

I saw the video via Andrew Fox (Mr_Andrew_Fox) but it is all over Twitter. Like Mr Fox, I reject the racism and religious bigotry displayed by these women. But I am also confused by it.

It is hard to count the number of women in the group of chanters because the camera and the train are moving, but I can see that about half of them are wearing hijabs and about half of them are dark skinned. In itself, that is not surprising. London is by far the most ethnically and religiously diverse city in the UK.

Do they not see the problem? They may genuinely be ignorant of the fact that the direct ancestors of most Israeli Jews came from the Middle East and North Africa, not Europe – because that statistic, and the whole history of the twentieth-century expulsion of the Mizrahi Jews from Muslim-majority countries in which Jews had lived for centuries, is not reported often in pro-Palestinian circles. But surely these women cannot be honestly unaware that by the same criteria that they demand be used to expel Jews from Israel, they themselves would be expelled from the UK?

October 30th, 2024 | 34 comments

Samizdata quote of the day – Slavery reparations is a grift, no ifs, no buts

· Historical views · International affairs · Slogans & Quotations · UK affairs

Britain did not benefit from (slave) labour anyway. We did not then have a state controlled economy, we do not now have a state controlled economy. Britain didn’t own the slaves so it’s not Britain that – even if you can prove that there should be reparations – which should pay for owning the slaves it didn’t.

This does then rather leave the reparations argument being that Barbados – or whoever – needs to go around suing, individually, the estates of those who owned slaves. Good luck with that one.

– Tim Worstall

With the small proviso that in more than a few ways, the UK does indeed now have a fairly state controlled economy, I agree with Tim as usual.

October 28th, 2024 | 23 comments

“Global calls for reparations are only growing louder. Why is Britain still digging in its heels?”

· Historical views · International affairs · Self ownership · UK affairs

“Global calls for reparations are only growing louder. Why is Britain still digging in its heels?”, asks Hilary Beckles, the chair of the Caribbean Reparations Commission.

The original version of this post said, “The answer is that even Sir Keir Starmer, the man who suffered the swiftest fall in popularity of any incoming British prime minister since polling began, has enough minimal awareness of political reality not to touch this one.” Then I saw an update to the Guardian‘s daily politics liveblog. It said, “Starmer ‘open to discussing non-cash forms of reparatory justice for slavery'”. Wow. This is like a man on a life-raft being open to discussing non-meat based forms of food justice with the circling sharks.

The BBC has up a story that currently has the headline “Commonwealth leaders to defy UK on slavery reparations”. The BBC’s original headline, under which it was posted to the /r/ukpolitics subreddit, was “Commonwealth heads of government to defy UK on reparatory justice”. The UKpolitics subreddit leans strongly left, but the most-recommended comment was this one by redditor LycanIndarys:

“A report published last year by the University of West Indies – backed by Patrick Robinson, a judge who sits on the International Court of Justice – concluded the UK owed more than £18tn in reparations for its role in slavery in 14 Caribbean countries.”

OK, so just as a rough guide to get your head around that sort of figure, total annual UK government spending is about £1.2tn. So if we scrapped every single thing that the UK government does, and devoted all government spending to paying these reparations, then it would still take 16 years to pay. And of course, the UK would collapse in the mean-time, because we would have no health-service, no military, no roads, no benefits, no education, etc.

Or if we would instead put it on our national debt, then we’d be looking at a significant increase from our current debt of £2.3tn. Effectively increasing our debt by a factor of 8. I assume the repayments on that would also cripple us, but I’ll admit I haven’t calculated the figures.

Put aside any morality on this, or thoughts about why some people seem to think that trans-Atlantic slavery is the only crime ever committed (a suspiciously American outlook), and look at this in pure political terms. Any government that agreed to pay those reparations would lose in a landslide to another party that had “stop giving money to the freeloading bastards” as line one in their manifesto, wouldn’t they?

You know how people always complain about Foreign Aid, because they don’t see the benefit on sending UK taxpayer money abroad? Well imagine the reaction to that, but about a sum of money literally a thousand times bigger.

October 25th, 2024 | 36 comments
 
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