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]
|
The charge that followed was not that I phrased it badly. It was that my position was racist.
I have two children. Both were born in England to British parents who each came here from somewhere else. They are not English either. They’re British. I said this in the very same podcast Sunak pulls quotes from in his article.
My kids also happen to be whiter than a Michael Buble Christmas album. So either I’m a racist against my own white children, or this isn’t an argument about race.
Suella Braverman, Sunak’s own former Home Secretary, responded to the row about my comments by penning an article in which she argued that as a proud British Asian she herself is not English. Is she racist against herself or is there perhaps more of a substantive discussion being had than people would like to pretend?
– Konstantin Kisin, responding to Rishi Sunak
“Dear Ed Sheeran, fence-sitting is so last century: musicians can no longer opt out of politics”, writes Zoe Williams in the Guardian.
Macklemore, both onstage and in his own statement, has rebuffed the argument that voicing support for Palestinians and criticising Israel and its actions in Gaza and the West Bank is antisemitic. (In 2014, he apologised for a costume he wore on stage, which critics said was antisemitic, saying: “I respect all cultures and all people.”)
So musicians “can’t” opt out of politics, but political opinion journalists opting out of either stating their own opinion as to whether Macklemore’s grotesque “Jewface” costume shown in this BBC article from 2014 might be a teensy-weensy bit anti-semitic, or of linking to a picture of it so that readers can decide for themselves, is just fine, apparently.
Macklemore should be free to throw Nazi salutes while prancing in his fake black beard and prosthetic hooked nose. He should be free to insult the general public’s intelligence and flatter his own public’s bigotry by saying with a smirk that he had no idea that anyone might think he was caricaturing a Jew. Zoe Williams should be free to pretend that she didn’t see the pictures in that BBC article despite having taken her “which critics said was antisemitic” line straight from it. And I’m free to say that for Zoe Williams, who was once longlisted for the Orwell Prize, to write an article demanding that Ed Sheeran take a side while averting her own eyes from blatant racism and concealing it from her readers makes her a worthy successor to Squealer.
The other day the people of the small Oxfordshire village of Piddington voted to leave Great Britain. Of course, they have no intention of doing any such thing: this was an attempt to demonstrate locals’ anger at the proposal to house over a thousand illegal immigrants at a nearby disused military base.
But what if a few more towns and villages were to follow suit? After all it is difficult to see why decent people would want to be part of a debt-ridden, crime-ridden, economically-stagnant, fascist dystopia whose leaders would much rather the said decent people were dead. What if such a movement snowballed and ended up with swathes of the country voting for what might be called Brexit2? They might join forces. They might have a convention. Sonorous phrases like “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…” might get an outing in England’s green and pleasant land. They might even make a stab at self-government.
Of course that would cut no ice with Britain’s rulers who believe in the divine right of the communist election-rigger. Any attempt by the secessionists to actually leave would be ruthlessly crushed. The only real question would be if the British (anti-British?) state would have the wherewithal to do it. If they did not, who knows? maybe we would all be applying for a passport to Piddington.
Why do the unions fund Labour? Because it works for them. The Employment Rights Act is very close to a straight transfer of TUC conference policy into the statute book, and nobody involved is embarrassed about it, nor should they be, since that is what affiliation has meant since 1900.
Sharon Graham has been admirably plain about this. Standing for the general secretaryship she told Keir Starmer there would be no more blank cheques. She has put Unite’s funding under review when Labour councils have crossed her. She treats the money as leverage because it is leverage, openly, on the record, in the Sunday papers. Then she stands up and objects to donations from men who want nothing.
Because that’s the difference, and it’s the bit her argument cannot survive. Harborne and Delo aren’t buying policy. There’s nothing to buy. We were low tax, pro-enterprise, anti-quango and hostile to the regulatory state before either of them wrote us a cheque, and we’d be all of those things tomorrow if both of them stopped. You cannot purchase a conviction from someone who already has one. All you can do is pay for the envelopes.
What they’re buying, as far as I can see, is a fair fight. The most conventional British appetite there is, the one that makes a crowd turn on a man who kicks somebody off the ball, and the one thing the modern establishment has decided it cannot afford to concede.
Nobody woke up. That’s the insult, and it isn’t aimed at two crypto billionaires who can look after themselves. It’s aimed at you, and it always was.
– Gawain Towler
97 of them were murdered by Muslim terrorists.
Here is a list of terrorist incidents in Great Britain this century, stating the ideology behind the attack, its date, the place it took place, the name usually given to the attack, and the number of victims killed.
Irish Republican – 09 September 2000 – MI6 HQ, London – MI6 rocket launcher attack – 0 killed.
Irish Republican – 04 March 2001 – BBC TV Centre – BBC TV Centre car bomb – 0 killed.
Irish Republican – 03 August 2001 – Ealing – Ealing car bomb – 0 killed.
Islamist – 07 July 2005 – London Transport system – 7/7 bombings – 52 killed.
Islamist – 21 July 2005 – London – 7/7 copycat bombs – 0 killed.
Other – 18 January 2007 – Various – Start of Miles Cooper letter bomb campaign – 0 killed.
Islamist – 30 June 2007 – Glasgow Airport – Glasgow airport attack – 0 killed.
Islamist – 14 May 2010 – East Ham – Stabbing of Stephen Timms MP – 0 killed.
Extreme Right – 29 April 2013 – Various – Start of Pavlo Lapshyn terrorism campaign – 1 killed.
Islamist – 22 May 2013 – Woolwich – Murder of Lee Rigby – 1 killed.
Irish Republican – 10 February 2014 – Various army recruitment offices – Start of New Irish Republican Army parcel bomb campaign – 0 killed.
Islamist – 18 February 2016 – Rochdale – Murder of Iman Jalal Uddin – 1 killed.
Extreme Right – 16 June 2016 – Birstall, West Yorkshire – Murder of Jo Cox MP – 1 killed.
Islamist – 22 March 2017 – Westminster Bridge, London – 2017 Westminster attack & murder of PC Keith Palmer – 5 killed.
Islamist – 22 May 2017 – Manchester Arena – Manchester Arena bombing – 22 killed.
Islamist – 03 June 2017 – London Bridge – 2017 London Bridge attack and Borough Market stabbings – 8 killed.
Extreme Right – 19 June 2017 – Finsbury Park, London – Finsbury Park attack – 1 killed.
Islamist – 15 June 2017 – Parsons Green, London – Parsons Green tube bombing – 0 killed.
Islamist – 14 August 2018 – Palace of Westminster – 2018 Westminster car attack – 0 killed.
Extreme Right – 16 March 2019 – Various – Vincent Fuller racist attacks – 0 killed.
Islamist – 29 November 2019 – London Bridge – 2019 London Bridge stabbings – 2 killed.
Islamist – 09 January 2020 – Whitemoor Prison, Cambridgeshire – Whitemoor prison stabbings – 0 killed.
Islamist – 02 February 2020 – Streatham, Lambeth, London – 2020 Streatham stabbing – 0 killed.
Islamist – 20 June 2020 – Forbury Gardens, Reading – 2020 Reading stabbings – 3 killed.
Islamist – 15 October 2021 – Liegh-on-Sea, Essex – Murder of David Amess MP – 1 killed.
Islamist – 14 November 2021 – Liverpool Women’s Hospital, Liverpool – Liverpool Women’s Hospital bombing – 0 killed.
Extreme Right – 30 October 2022 – Dover – Dover firebomb attack – 0 killed.
Extreme Right – 02 April 2024 – Hindlip, Worcestershire – Attack on asylum seeker at Hindlip – 0 killed.
Islamist – 02 October 2025 – Heaton Park Synagogue, Manchester – Manchester Synagogue attack – 2 killed.
Islamist – 31 December 2018 – Victoria Station, Manchester – Manchester Victoria station attack – 0 killed.
Islamist – 29 April 2026 – Golders Green Synagogue, London – Golders Green Synagogue attack – 0 killed.
The list was compiled from these Wikipedia pages:
List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain in the 2000s
List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain in the 2010s
List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain in the 2020s
I have excluded from the count the three young girls murdered in Southport by Axel Rudakubana because although he was charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 for possession of ricin and a military study of an Al-Qaeda training manual, I am not convinced his motive was political. I have also excluded the killing of Anne Widdecombe from the count because the suspect is awaiting trial and the presumption of innocence applies. If these two cases were included, the proportion of terrorist murders this century that were carried out by Muslims would be 97/104; 93% rather than 97%.
I do not blame innocent Muslims for the crimes of their co-religionists. I do not claim that all or most Muslims are terrorists. I honour those many Muslims who have fought against Islamic terrorism, at horrendous risk to themselves and their families. I do not deny that there are other sorts of terrorists out there, including those who seek to murder Muslims. But 97 out of 100 is a very high proportion.
Oddly enough, Labour governments understand incentives perfectly well when trying to make us stop smoking, or encouraging us to buy electric cars and install heat pumps. But suggest that incentives might also influence migration, however, and the concept suddenly becomes bafflingly controversial.
– Neil Davenport
Police professional standards departments, detecting the mood music, react accordingly. The Police Federation has pointed out how, from 2022-2025, 100 police officers and staff died of suicide — partly attributable to heavy-handed internal investigations. Then there’s the roll-call of officers thrown under the bus for political expediency — like Pc Lorne Castle, who had the temerity to call a knife-wielding male suspect “a bitch”, Sergeant Rhodri Davies, accused of using disproportionate force against a 6’7” prisoner in custody, or Pc Matthew Pike, charged with causing death by dangerous driving (it was the suspect he was chasing who was driving dangerously, as a jury later found).
Then, if criminal “remedies” fail, the Independent Office for Police Conduct gets a second bite of the cherry by pursuing officers for professional misconduct. Compare such cases with that of the former West Midlands Police chief, Craig Guildford — found to have not only constructed a bogus intelligence case against Israeli football fans, but misled Parliament too. Operational officers go under the prosecutorial bus. Senior cops have “teachable moments”, after which they quietly retire.
– Dominic Adler
Covering your face is clearly an affront to trust, openness and civility. Progressives know this, of course – although they only say so when it suits them. And their double standards aren’t only on show when it comes to the burqa.
The recent anti-immigration protests in Dover and Portsmouth were condemned as ‘thuggish’ by Labour’s crime and policing minister, Sarah Jones, who admonished the protesters for being ‘dressed in all black and wearing face masks’. But when hundreds of Islamic sectarians – dressed in all black and wearing face masks – marched through Whitechapel in east London last year, there were no such complaints from the left. Nor has there been much criticism of the thousands of protesters who have covered their faces with keffiyehs while calling for the destruction of Israel on pro-Palestine marches over the past few years. It seems it’s only when white working-class men start masking up that we hear all the talk about law and order, and the importance of seeing each other’s faces.
– Hugo Timms
What we witnessed in Portsmouth was a public explosion of the deepest fissure in British society right now. On one side stands a state that has abdicated its prime responsibility, which is to defend Britain’s territory and Britain’s people from external forces. And on the other stand everyday citizens enraged by this managed suicide of British statehood, by the sacrifice of our sovereignty at the altar of a phoney globalist virtue that says borders are bigotry and migration is splendid.
A Home Office whistleblower has said what many of us have suspected for some time: that the vast majority of “asylum seeker” claims are false. In fact, he says, only around one per cent are genuine. For the state to keep foisting strong, fit, aggy men onto communities that don’t want them, while barking “They’re asylum seekers, you racists”, is wicked and preposterous. If the state wants to put a stop to the kind of vigilantism we saw in Portsmouth, then it just needs to do one simple thing: its job.
– Brendan O’Neill
Imagine having a tax even more stupid than the one generally agreed to be the most stupid ever?
Mansion tax inspectors will target homes with views of the countryside and driveways, The Telegraph can reveal.
The Government valuation agents will be sent out with a checklist of features supposed to signal an increase in a property’s estimated value.
They include whether the house is set in scenic surroundings, if it has a conservatory, and even the number of parking spaces and bathrooms.
It comes after The Telegraph revealed that HMRC agents will be able to demand entry to people’s properties to assess their value for the levy.
Sigh. So, the most stupid tax ever is generally agreed to be the Windows Tax. This led to people bricking up their windows in order to avoid the tax and therefore live in the dark just to middle-finger the revenue. Well, OK, giving the revenue the middle-finger is an honourable thing to do but still, forcing people to live in the dark and dank via your choice of taxation methods is generally agreed to be very stupid indeed.
– Tim Worstall
This brings us back to legal fetishism and the importance of grasping regime politics and how it informs judicial thinking. Judges do not simply make and apply rules ‘neutrally’. As I said earlier, judges are representatives of a regime and protect its interests. And at the heart of our regime is faith in, essentially, open borders – mass immigration is one of its central principles and tenets.
– David McGrogan
Will Self manages the same trick, in his own register. He recently published a piece he had the nerve to call J’Accuse, in which he put the invented term “gender criticality” in scare quotes, for fear that the rest of his prose might touch against it, and treated a position that would have been unremarkable a decade ago as self-evidently disreputable now.
Self doesn’t do Jon’s soft, sorrowful faux-concern. He does something closer to sneering, the confident dismissal of a man who’s decided which side sounds cleverer and doesn’t need to check. But it’s the same cowardice wearing a better jacket. Neither of them will say whether a man belongs in a woman’s changing room. But both of them will happily write thousands of words about those of us who simply say no.
– Graham Linehan
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Recent Comments