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My wife is a fellow – she finds it useful to work there occasionally and attend events – at the Royal Society of Arts. I know Anton Howes, the RSA’s in-house historian (his writings on the Industrial Revolution are excellent, and he’s known to groups like the Adam Smith Institute).
(Here is Anton’s substack
In issue three, 2023, in what the RSA calls “The Planet Issue” of its quarterly magazine, are articles asserting how serious the climate “emergency” is, and in one article, (the print edition, I cannot find the web version, which makes me wonder why not) it has a piece by Tom Hardy, entitled “Tropes of Deception”.
Hardy is a member of Extinction Rebellion and co-founded of MP Watch, a constituency network “monitoring climate denial in parliament and MPs’ commitment to net zero”.
Hardy’s RSA article refers to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (involving the likes of Benny Peiser and Conservative MP Steve Baker, among others) and other supposedly nefarious “Tufton Street” organisations. As Hardy writes: “Their agenda: to deny the scientific reality of climate change at the behest of those vested interests whose bottom line requires a repudiation of net zero and renewable energy technology.” (So that’s a “no” for nuclear power then, or an endorsement?)
In what I think is the most unpleasant part of the article, Hardy refers to the “Editor’s Code of Practice” of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPOS) and refers to what the GWPF does, and how its reports are used by journalists. Hardy also writes about “cherry picking details from authentic research”. (Coming from a deep Green, this claim of cherry picking is a bit rich, given some Greens have admitted to mistaken alarmism.) Hardy suggests that IPSO would, if he had his way, drop the hammer on journalists quoting alarmist sceptic organisations without, at least, lots of disclaimers.
The whole piece, which includes swipes at the Daily Telegraph’s business journalist Ben Marlow, and the writer Matt Ridley, finishes with the line that IPSO must be “empowered” and be “free of political interference” (translation: the wrong kind of interference, as he defines it) and be a “priority of the next government”. (How very reassuring.) Hardy does not state what this might mean precisely, but one might reasonably infer that he wants to squash the ability of journalists to source anything other than alarmist content around human-caused global warming, or face some sort of consequence to their careers and publications.
What’s striking is Hardy assumes the case around a climate emergency is beyond any scientific doubt, that debate is over, that any attempt to challenge alarmism must be squashed, including by using so-called guardians of press “independence” to punish journalists that are naughty or foolish enough to cite sources such as the GWPF. This is a religious mindset, of the very worst kind. And it is being laid out in the elegant surroundings of the Royal Society of Arts.
I suppose there are several things that might have prompted Hardy to take this line, and for someone at the RSA to be complacent enough to print him. Hardy’s possibly worried that the deep Greens are losing public support. Hardy’s right to be concerned. For starters, as has occurred over the anger at London mayor Khan’s extension of the ULEZ rules on cars, regulations in the name of Net Zero are causing real political anger. The antics of Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Greta Thunberg and others are also riling a population that has had enough with relentless nagging, taxes and rules. This isn’t just a UK issue. Look at Dutch farmers, for example.
There’s also the transparent bias that is alienating important parts of the electorate: if we get a hot summer, then the UN, for example, talks about “global boiling”, but goes mute when a snowstorm halts windmills in Texas, for example. The public aren’t stupid, and they can see the imbalance.
There’s also the whole COVID-19 aftermath and its impact on those claiming to follow “The science” (the definite article is a red flag). That episode has weakened trust in official organisations’ pronouncements on science, particularly given the dishonesty about masks, and the attempts – which eventually ended – to halt questions about China’s culpability and the role of a lab In Wuhan.
There are several points the GWPF might want to comment on, given the attacks on it in the pages of a body as supposedly prestigious, and “royal”, as the RSA. (I note, as above, that a web version of this article is unavailable.) First, the RSA is clearly all in for climate change alarmism; it is publishing incendiary and bullying material from hardline ideologues that use disruption of ordinary people’s lives to make a case; ER has shut down the publication of a newspaper it does not like; the RSA has, in this specific edition of the RSA magazine, not provided any opportunity for a different point of view to be aired. Where, for example, are the references to the views of Michael Shellenberger, Bjorn Lomborg, Roger Pielke, Alex Epstein, former Obama advisor Steven Koonin, and many more? I guess they’re all evil and just in it for the money.
Samizdata regulars are, I know, unsurprised by all this. The RSA has, like English Heritage, the British Museum (assuming it has anything left in it), the British Library, and countless other supposed bastions of education and learning, been given the Gramsci treatment (the “long march through the institutions”). There may be people who continue to enjoy the place, with its lovely 18th century architecture, agreeable surroundings and networking parties over a glass of bubbly. Alas, champagne appears one of the few compensations from a body that appears intent on foisting shrill agendas. It may still do some good, which is why people such as Anton Howes can work there, but one has to plough through a lot of crap to find it.
There are many reasons why, as a radical classical liberal chap, I focus a lot of my attention on this issue. Because what the likes of ER want is to suppress, even kill, human flourishing. They are prepared to call for coercion; they applaud the disruption of people’s lives, and have shown an utter contempt for a free press. They’re bullies, and are beginning to realise that people are fighting back.
Go on, try to remember what Theresa May achieved in politics at all, let alone as prime minister. It’s not easy.
– Gawain Towler
Who fact-checks the fact-checkers? Whatever you do, don’t ask Marianna Spring. If new revelations are to be believed, the BBC’s ‘disinformation and social-media correspondent’ – who has been showered with awards, praise, broadsheet profiles and glossy photoshoots for her putative one-woman stand against online lies and conspiracy theories – can’t even be trusted to produce a relatively factual CV.
– Tom Slater
But this is not all that the Energy Bill 2023 does, and here we come to a fresher development in the relationship between law and the state. Importantly, Brownsword has recently been suggesting that we are rapidly advancing into the next iteration of law – Law 3.0 – in which law becomes essentially self-executing through technology and, indeed, the very exercise of subjecting human conduct to rules becomes subsumed by technological management. Here, the creation of rules itself will become seen as archaic, with technology providing us with better – more efficient, more rational, more effective – forms of justice than those available to the flawed system of law which we currently respect. The end result (the apotheosis of Law 3.0, as it were), will be the merging of technology with law, such that the requirement for rules to exist will disappear and human conduct will be more or less entirely managed by technology.
– David McGrogan
Hobbes was right. We must have government. If men were to try to live without ‘a common Power to keep them all in awe’, life would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’, there would be ‘a perpetuall warre of every man against his neighbour’, and there would be adverts for cheese on the London Underground.
City AM reports,
TfL [Transport for London] has left a cheese company’s bosses feeling blue after banning ads depicting their products on the tube – saying the diet staple is too unhealthy.
London’s transport network has been cracking down on unhealthy food advertising on the tube, but according to The Times this now includes the dairy favourite.
The founder of Cheese Geek, Edward Hancock, said the ban was “crazy” and said he couldn’t understand why fizzy drink ads were allowed on the network but not artisan cheeses.
Hancock said cheese “has been shown in numerous recent studies to be beneficial for health.”
TfL banned high fat advertising in 2019. It was intended to capture fast food but appears to have widened in scope to high-end cheddar.
TfL said the cheese ads – which were to be part of a campaign run by Workspace, the office provider and consultancy – could not go on the network because TfL uses “the Food Standards Agency’s model to define foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt.”
I think Sadiq Khan got to the bit in Leviathan about “Power to keep them all in awe” and thought, “I like the sound of that”.
…”once again the reintroduction of National Service is being mooted by think tanks, this time as a thinly veiled mechanism for enslaving the young. Leave aside the point that, far from bolstering conservative values, the diversity commissars of the Civil Service would turn it into the `national woke service’ from day one. Conscriptin is just about defensive as a way to maintain a military reserve; as a way to extract free labour for the state, it’s morally reprehensible. It’s also economically insane. The public sector is staggeringly unproductive. Labour that is unpaid is labour that is asking to be used in the most inefficient way possible, on jobs that would never be done if the work cost the minimum wage.”
– Sam Ashworth-Hayes, Daily Telegraph (£). This is probably one of the best take-downs of the whole “put ’em in the Army and sort out the kids” trope that I have come across in a while.
Prior to this, in November 2018, academics at Queen Mary University of London were due to publish a study in the Lancet that found schemes like ULEZ make no difference to children’s health. It took the LEZ (Low Emission Zone), the precursor policy to ULEZ, introduced in 2008, which levied fines on lorries, buses and coaches, and examined its impact on over 2,000 children. ‘Despite… improvements in air quality, there was no evidence of improvements in the proportion of children with small lungs or asthma symptoms over this period’, it concluded. Unhappy with these findings, the mayor’s office wrote to the lead author, Professor Chris Griffiths, and asked him to change the conclusion. ‘It reads like LEZ or similar have no impact at all’, deputy mayor Rodrigues complained. Griffiths refused to budge. ‘It’s difficult to alter the sentence you refer to as it’s what we set out to look for but didn’t find’, he replied. The study was published unaltered the next day, but the deputy mayor’s intent was clear – to rewrite science to meet City Hall’s agenda.
– Fraser Myers
Here are three articles I saw over the last couple of days, one about Canada, one about the UK, and one about Ireland.
Jordan Peterson writing in the Telegraph:
As a professional, practicing clinical psychologist, I never thought I would fall foul of Canada’s increasingly censorial state. Yet, like so many others – including teachers, nurses, and other professionals – that is precisely what has happened. In my case, a court has upheld an order from the College of Psychologists of Ontario that I undergo social media training or lose my licence to practice a profession I have served for most of my adult life.
Their reason? Because of a handful of tweets on my social media, apparently. Yes: I am at risk of losing my licence to practice as a mental health professional because of the complaints of a tiny number of people about the utterly unproven “harm” done by my political opinions.
Bill Goodwin writing in Computer Weekly:
Plans by the government in the Online Safety Bill to require tech companies to scan encrypted messages will damage the UK’s reputation for data security, the UK’s professional body for IT has warned.
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, which has 70,000 members, said that government proposals in the new laws to compromise end-to-end encryption are not possible without creating systemic security risks and in effect bugging millions of phone users.
John McGuirk writing in Gript.ie:
Yesterday morning my colleague Ben Scallan attended the Electoral Commission’s announcement of the new constituency boundaries for the next Irish general election. While most of the focus of the event was on who would be voting where, Ben asked a question of more general relevance to the commission: It has been granted significant powers to regulate so-called “misinformation” in Irish election campaigns. If this was a power it needs, we reasoned, then surely it would have examples of the kind of misinformation that it intended to regulate in future elections. Ben asked for such an example, and here is what happened:
That the commission does not have examples of the kind of misinformation it intends to correct is hardly shocking if, like me, you are a cynic. It’s quite hard to genuinely shock us cynics.
And yet Mrs. Justice Marie Baker, the Chairperson of the Commission, did indeed manage to shock me at 3.15 in the clip above when she said “we’re also going to have to learn how to deal with the balance between the right to freedom of expression on the one hand, and on the other hand, the right of persons not to be misinformed”.
This is shocking firstly because Mrs. Justice Baker is a judge of the Supreme Court, and should know that while the right to freedom of expression is in the Irish constitution, the right not to be misinformed appears nowhere. Even granting some allowances for the fact that she was speaking off the cuff, it’s objectively remarkable to see a Supreme Court Judge essentially making up a law, and a right, that nobody has ever voted on – and more than that, assuming for herself the right to enforce on everyone else a right or a law that she’s just invented herself.
To do that is one thing – to do it while speaking of “defending democracy”, when democracy is about having the people choose their own laws, is quite another.
“The right of persons not to be misinformed” is a truly Orwellian inversion of the meaning of “right”. It describes the withdrawal of a right as the granting of one.
I would like to think that the absence of any news stories about threats to freedom in Australia, New Zealand or the United States in today’s little collection was because there were none to report. I would also like the figure and eyesight of a twenty year-old and a billion pounds.
I’m sure that vaccination might be the right thing for some – assuming that we are talking about an effective vaccine that doesn’t do more harm than good. Oh, right… As you were. As they admit, it isn’t something we should be concerned about, URTIs happen every winter and every winter some people fall off their perch because it is their time and that’s what finally sees them off. No, I’m not being harsh, just recognising basic biology. If there was an effective, safe vaccine, then I’d say go for it. However, I no longer have faith in our vaccination programme, so I will not be partaking. That loss of trust is nothing to do with me. I didn’t lie, obfuscate and demonise anyone who dared to raise concerns and I didn’t rush something through before long term results were in.
– Longrider
Katie Morley is the Telegraph’s “Consumer Champion”. People who feel they have been mistreated by companies write to her and she puts their tales of woe in the paper and threatens the company with even more bad publicity if they won’t put things right. Her articles usually end with a line about how So-and-so company has issued a full refund and apologised.
Usually, but not always. Her most recent piece was this one:
‘I spent £27,000 on a cruise I can’t afford, and Cunard won’t give me a full refund’
Her anonymous correspondent says,
Back in early 2022, I had a serious health scare. While waiting for an operation, I decided that I needed something to look forward to. Both my wife and I love to travel and so, on the spur of the moment, I decided to use our savings to book a £27,000 cruise around the world.
I put a £1,500 deposit on a Cunard World Cruise in 2024 on the Queen Victoria. I thought a trip like this would compensate for everything we missed during the pandemic.
In the meantime, friends asked us to join them on a Christmas cruise in 2022, also on the Queen Victoria. We thought this would give us the opportunity to acquaint ourselves with the ship. However, the whole trip was a disaster from the moment we embarked.
After listing some of the things wrong with this ‘preparatory’ trip on the Queen Victoria, the writer finishes by saying,
We then realised that we could not spend three months aboard the Queen Victoria. Also, as a result of the economic downturn, our savings had reduced drastically and we no longer had the money to pay for the cruise. We are both retired NHS workers and live on our pensions so we decided that we would have to cancel.
As soon as we got back from the cruise in January 2023, we contacted ROL, which we had booked through, saying we wanted to cancel. We were shocked and disappointed when Cunard said that we could cancel without losing our £1,500 deposit, but we would have to book a future cruise for the equivalent amount of money (£27,000), or alternatively, a number of cruises adding up to this total.
Ms Morley did express sympathy for the writer’s health and financial troubles, but her sympathy did not extend to taking up the cudgels on his behalf. She wrote,
…you say you can no longer afford this cruise, yet when I asked, you said you and your wife’s NHS pensions were guaranteed defined benefit arrangements which are still in place. So what had changed since you booked the £27,000 cruise, I asked? You told me you’d invested a significant sum in Vodafone shares, which had tanked, causing you to lose half your money.
I’m sorry if this sounds harsh, but your stock market misfortunes have absolutely nothing to do with Cunard and, as such, I was not prepared to ask it to break its terms and conditions because you had a disastrous flutter and can no longer afford the cruise you booked. If you really can’t go on the world cruise or book alternatives, then I’m afraid you’ll just have to swallow this £1,500 loss and put it down to experience.
What really interested me was the response from the Telegraph readers. I expected them to support Cunard, and they did, but I had not expected so many of them to specifically resent the way that the writer had attempted to garner sympathy by mentioning that he and his wife were retired NHS workers.
The most recommended comment was by Roger Sidney and said, “Love the bit about ‘we are retired NHS workers’. Come one everyone, give ’em a clap!” Someone called Mytwo Penneth said, “Former NHS workers booking £27k cruises and speculating on shares. Then they have the brass neck to get KM involved in an attempt to recover a deposit.” Brian Gedalla said, “Nice to see some backbone from Katie. You could have played “Entitlement Bingo” with this one. Like Roger below, I laughed out loud when I got to the “we are retired NHS workers” line.” There were many other similar comments.
Although I have long since ceased to believe that a command economy is a good way to arrange a nation’s healthcare, my own experiences with the National Health Service have been good. Those people I know who work for it are hardworking, and I did clap during the pandemic, and meant it. My view that it would be desirable to privatise the NHS is only shared by about 2% of British people. Even among Telegraph readers, the great majority still support the NHS model. I do not think that the anger in these replies was motivated by hostility to the NHS per se. But something has changed in Britain when so many refuse NHS workers the automatic deference that this pair clearly expected to receive.
“It is likely that the central bank will assist/require the banks to provide the same interest rates and terms on replacement Scottish pound mortgages and loans as you had on your old sterling ones.”
– Dr Tim Rideout, from an article in the National with the title “How a Scottish currency will impact mortgages and other loans”.
Dr Rideout, who was let back into the Scottish National Party after agreeing to undergo anti-racism training, is a member of the SNP’s Policy Development Committee and Convener of that party’s Scottish Currency Group. He is fully entitled to refer to himself as “Dr Rideout”, since he has a doctorate. He is also entitled to call himself an economist, as he has a BA in economics. He is “Dr Rideout, Economist” just like he says, and if you got the impression from that that his doctorate was in economics, that’s your fault for not checking. Same as it is your own silly fault if you got the impression that the website featuring his writings with the URL https://www.reservebank.scot/, bearing the title “SCOTTISH RESERVE BANK/ Banca Cùl-stòr na h’Alba”, and including on its front page the words “Welcome to Scotland’s Central Bank” was the website of an official body called “the Scottish Reserve Bank”. If you thought that the splendid neoclassical building in the first picture, which features in many photographs and paintings of Edinburgh, was the bank because of all those pillars, more fool you. A simple reverse image search would have told you that it was the disused Edinburgh Royal High School. Dr Rideout (Economist) cannot be held responsible for your inability to use Google. In any case, the website does say, “Please note, the Scottish Reserve Bank is not legally a bank.” Where? Right there, in the paragraph at the bottom of the “About” page, just before the bit where it says, “Website by Great-Value-Websites.Com”. It was your job to read every word of every page in full.
After all that, readers might think I planned to cast doubt upon Dr Rideout’s prediction that “It is likely that the central bank will assist/require the banks to provide the same interest rates and terms on replacement Scottish pound mortgages and loans as you had on your old sterling ones”, or his prediction that “Your bank will contact you near the time and ask if you would like to change your mortgage into the Scottish pound or take out new Scottish pound credit cards and loans.”
Perish the thought. Several of the replies to Dr Rideout’s tweet (or “X-cretion” as I believe they are meant to be called now) in which he flags up his piece in the National do point out that the banks would be insane to do any of these things, but a little thing like that does not invalidate his prediction.
If Scottish independence comes to pass while the Scottish National Party is in power then you can bet that the Scottish government will indeed assist/require the banks to pretend the new currency is equal in value to the old. History is full of governments making insane declarations about the value of their currency and requiring, sorry, assisting, their citizens to impoverish themselves by acting as if the fantasies were truth.
As Dr Rideout says himself,
When the Central Bank tells the commercial banks to jump, the only answer is ‘how high Sir?’.
Tory councillor arrested for ‘hate crime’ after sharing video criticising police
A Conservative councillor was arrested for an alleged hate crime after re-tweeting a video criticising how the police treated a Christian street preacher.
Cllr Anthony Stevens, 50, from Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, told The Telegraph he was arrested at his home this month and escorted to a police station for questioning about tweets from his personal account, which has 76 followers.
One tweet involved a video showing how police had treated the arrest of Christian preacher Oluwole Ilisanmi in Southgate, London, in 2019.
A police officer snatched Mr Ilisanmi’s Bible after the preacher was accused of being Islamophobic. Mr Ilisanmi was later awarded £2,500 for wrongful arrest. The video, shared by Cllr Stevens in May, also showed footage of a police officer apparently stating that a Muslim preacher was allowed to preach on a high street.
So, let’s get this straight. Councillor Stevens was arrested for criticising the police for arresting Oluwole Ilisanmi, an arrest the police themselves have admitted was wrongful.
There’s more.
Police also questioned why the Tory councillor had tweeted his support for Cllr King Lawal, a fellow Northamptonshire councillor, who has been “cancelled” for expressing his Christian beliefs in relation to LGBT issues, according to Cllr Stevens.
Cllr Lawal, 31, who is the only black councillor in Northamptonshire, was suspended by his local Conservative group in July, after he responded to images of Pride parades organised by LGBT groups, writing: “When did pride become a thing to celebrate. Because of pride, Satan fell as an archangel. Pride is not a virtue but a sin. Those who have pride should repent of their sins and return to Jesus Christ. He can save you.”
In July, Cllr Stevens retweeted a petition calling for Cllr Lawal’s Conservative positions to be reinstated, writing: “If you value free speech please sign and share.”
He said that police officers showed him his tweets regarding Cllr Lawal and asked him why he supported the petition. Cllr Stevens said he stated that he is a “free speech absolutist” and that even if he does not agree with someone, he believes in their right to express their beliefs.
When the actions of the police prompt a former Director of Public Prosecutions to say, “It is essential that police officers are properly trained in the importance of free speech rights and the particularly strong protection that the law gives to political speech”, it is a safe bet that a second apology for wrongful arrest will eventually be issued by Northamptonshire police. They will make the apology late and with bad grace, making sure to put in a bit about how, “When a complaint is made, the police must investigate”. They will speak in injured tones of being “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t”.
Perhaps Plod has a point there. After the unprovoked racial murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, laws were rushed through that said that if anyone connected with an incident thought it was a “hate incident”, then a hate incident it was. I distinctly remember the Guardian‘s Hugo Young saying at the time that this definition was “intellectually absurd”, though I cannot find the quote online. Still, the police display definite preferences in which way they choose to be damned. The sort of damnation that comes your way months or years after you arrested a local elected official for hate crime is so mild that it might more accurately be described as paying for your pleasures.
And the truly damnable thing was this:
Cllr Stevens said he understood that he had been reported to the police by a local Labour Party member.
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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.
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