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.
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“Victims petrify politicians”, writes “Bagehot” in the Economist. (Alternative link here.) “They are apex stakeholders. Normal rules for decisions—risk, cost, proportionality—are thrown away when they are involved. What if a headline suggests ministers snubbed victims? Write the cheque. Civil servants, always cautious, become cowards. Campaigners know this. The unedifying spectacle of a grieving parent wheeled in front of cameras to push a particular policy, whether limits on smartphones or ninja swords, has become a political trump card.”
“Has become”? One of my few criticisms of this admirably unaccommodating article is that it talks as if this development were new. That voters and hence governments cannot bear to disagree with a victim was already old news in the days when the cheques being written really were cheques. It was an established political pattern in 2001 when I wrote a piece for the Libertarian Alliance about the reaction to the gun massacre at Dunblane.
. . . nowadays we give the bereaved parents at Dunblane, the survivors of rail crashes, and similar groups both the license to say anything due to the distraught and the intellectual consideration due to experts. They can’t have both. Not because I’m too mean to give it to them, but because the two are logically incompatible. The press and public have handed power to those least able to exercise it well.
Trade-offs are ignored when victims campaign. Martyn’s law, named after a victim of a suicide-bombing at a concert in Manchester in 2017, requires any venue that can hold more than 200 people to have an anti-terror plan, even if it is a village hall. It is likely to cost businesses about £170m ($225m) a year to comply and bring about £2m of benefits, mainly from lower crime. A careful balancing of interests is close to impossible if a victim’s mother is involved. “This would not have happened without your campaigning,” said Sir Keir at a meeting with Martyn’s mother, rightly.
The word “rightly” is not here a term of praise. “Martyn’s Law”, like nearly every law named after a victim, is a bad law that should never have been passed. But the blame for it should not fall on Martyn’s mother. God knows she never wanted to be labelled “Victim’s Mother” on the chyron. She never wanted to be in a position such that her opinions on measures to take against terrorism were of interest to anyone. She never sought to be a lawmaker; never claimed she would be any good at it. The man who should be blamed did.
The next time someone asks what we mean when we say ‘Islamo-left’, I’m going to show them footage from yesterday’s protest in Whitechapel in East London. What a morally suicidal schlep that was. What an unholy union of witless leftists and menacing Islamists. ‘Refugees welcome here!’, cried the granola-fed grads of the limp-wristed left. ‘Allahu Akbar!’, barked the masked mob of religious hotheads. Rarely has the lethal idiocy of the left’s bed-hopping with Islamism been so starkly exposed.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Asked for his own judgement on Britain’s prospects, Cummings claimed there is a “black pill” in the fact that few societies escape the dynamics of decline that the country now appears trapped in; the “white pill”, on the other hand, is that Britain’s system has proven surprisingly resilient and adaptable in the past. He then implored the Looking for Growth membership to put aside their start-ups and to help rejuvenate the establishment. Whether and how they respond to this call will be of some consequence to the country’s future.
As the Metropolitan Police announce the demise of non-crime hate incidents, the Telegraph has run a feature on the Free Speech Union, crediting its years of campaigning against NCHIs and support for cancel culture victims.
I was baffled by my first exposure to antisemitism in Eastern Europe in 1992. I explained my confusion by saying it was ancient history in Britain. Our last pogrom was in the Middle Ages.
Since returning to England in 2011, I’ve had a nagging fear that this was not likely to remain true. The growth of Islam, antisemitic by its very nature, has been supported politically by the British Left. Socialists and Muslims have together revived an ancient evil.
Perhaps the Yom Kippur attack in Manchester is not a pogrom as it’s just one killer and not a mob? Either way, it’s a fall from grace. I am ashamed for my nation and furious that our “leaders” are still wittering on about “Islamophobia.” A phobia is an irrational fear. There is nothing more rational than fearing Islam — a religion conceived as if to justify the sins of its founder – one of the worst men who ever lived.
An Afghan migrant who was deemed an adult by UK authorities because he had a “protruding Adam’s apple”, bags under his eyes and skin that “did not appear youthful” has won £25,000 after a judge ruled he was a child.
I have a feeling this Landeur chap on YouTube is rather capturing the UK zeitgeist right now. Here he is pointing out the dangers of ever increasing taxes.
Engaging with the Great Reform Bill 2029 idea, it’s a masterstroke. In an era of short-termism, Lee’s proposal for a omnibus bill echoes the 1832 Act’s transformative power, bundling fixes to overwhelm opposition and deliver systemic reset. It’s not pie-in-the-sky; it’s pragmatic radicalism, recognising that piecemeal tweaks won’t cut it against the “malign web.”
You can be a “partner”, a “reliable supplier” or perhaps even an “ally” of Brussels. You can even stand next to Ursula von der Leyen in London and proclaim the end of the Brexit wars. But unless you are an EU member state, you will always be a competitor and ultimately expendable.
There is no offence of blasphemy in our law. Burning a Koran may be an act that many Muslims find desperately upsetting and offensive. The criminal law, however, is not a mechanism that seeks to avoid people being upset, even grievously upset. The right to freedom of expression, if it is a right worth having, must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb.
We live in a liberal democracy. One of the precious rights that affords us is to express our own views and read, hear and consider ideas without the state intervening to stop us doing so. The price we pay for that is having to allow others to exercise the same rights, even if that upsets, offends or shocks us.
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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