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]
|
In case you are not aware of this – and there is no way you would if you got all your news from the Sky website – yesterday we learnt that political entrepreneur, Mr Brexit, and all-round inconvenience to the Establishment, Nigel Farage, has had his bank account closed. No explanation has been offered. When he attempted to open an account at other banks (6 or 7 according to him) he was turned down in every case.
Wow! just wow.
It’s nothing new of course. Similar things have happened to Toby Young of the Free Speech Union and to the guys at Triggernometry. It comes at a time when any number of people have been kicked off social media or lost their jobs as a result of expressing the wrong opinion. I believe even The Boss once fell into the former category.
But, Patrick, you are a libertarian. Surely, you believe in producer sovereignty? Surely, you believe that a bank or any other private institution has every right to decide who it trades with and more pertinently who it doesn’t trade with?
I do indeed. But cherchez l’état. Once upon a time there was such a thing as the Ecology Building Society. It took in deposits and lent it out to – as it would see it – eco-friendly projects. It wasn’t very big and was eventually closed down by regulation. More recently, some of you will be aware of the travails of Dave Fishwick. He didn’t think banks in Burnley were much cop so he tried to set up his own. Not an easy thing to do as it turned out. So difficult in fact that – IIRC – only one new bank had been established in the UK in the last 50 years. The bank in question was Metro Bank which I believe has also been involved in a bit of cancellation recently. Fishwick eventually got his way but only by a bit of creative loophole exploitation.
So, essentially, a bank is very much a creature of the state. It is subject to the arbitrary whims of a capricious master. All very medieval. What are the chances that all these banks have been lent on? High, I would say. This wasn’t always the case. A hundred years ago – where I spend a lot of my time – there were any number of banks. Some of them were not particularly well run but it would appear that if you were dissatisfied with the banks on offer you could set up your own.
But hang about, if Farage’s de-banking is all to do with state regulation how come all those people got cancelled on social media which has almost no regulation at all? Er…
Update 1/7/23 It would appear that the Ecology Building Society is very much still with us.
MARULLUS:
Be gone!
Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,
Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
That needs must light on this ingratitude.
FLAVIUS:
Go, go, good countrymen, and for this fault
Assemble all the poor men of your sort,
Draw them to Tiber banks, and weep your tears
Into the channel, till the lowest stream
Do kiss the most exalted shores of all.
All the Commoners exit.
See whe’er their basest mettle be not moved.
They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness.
Go you down that way towards the Capitol.
This way will I. Disrobe the images
If you do find them decked with ceremonies.
The tribunes Marullus and Flavius confidently sent the rude mechanicals off with their tails between their legs in Act I Scene I of Julius Caesar. Their modern successors, lacking the power to have people sewn into a sack and thrown in the Tiber, are finding it a little more troublesome to bring about a suitable attitude of repentance in the populace.
“The Brexit Question Time’s audience backs up what our survey found: no regrets” is the slightly exaggerated headline of an article in the Guardian by Professor Anand Menon and Sophie Stowers of the academic think tank “UK in a Changing Europe”.
A majority of leavers feel they had all the information they needed to make a decision in 2016. And a plurality think that they had sufficient information from both sides of the referendum campaign to make an informed decision. What they resent is the fact that political leaders have not capitalised on the sovereignty for which they voted; 39% of them think politicians have not even tried to make Brexit work.
Yet while they are frustrated, leavers did not expect instant results. A quarter of them think not enough time has passed to judge whether Brexit has gone well or badly; 61% think Brexit will turn out well or very well in the future. There was a sense among those in the audience last night that they did not expect to wake up on 24 June 2016 in a whole different Britain. Rather, Brexit is an ongoing process that, while politicians have messed it up to date, still holds the promise of greater successes to come.
So, it should come as no surprise that many – including most of those in Clacton last night – still back the decision they made in 2016. In our survey, 72% of 2016 leave voters, knowing what they do now, would still vote as they did.
Literary critic Cyril Connolly said that the war between the generations is the only war in which everyone changes sides eventually. He was wrong. Politics is war, of course; and the Conservative Party switched en masse years ago. Unencumbered by any meaningful philosophy, they just marched from right to left.
Theresa May sounds for all the world like a Labour back-bencher buttering up the party big guns. It’s difficult listening. That said, I fully understand her desire to put the boot in. Who wouldn’t?
The death of the Tories is not a tragedy in and of itself. The carcass can rot for all I care. It’s what they haven’t done. What they failed to deliver. And all the fucking about.
One thing they did manage to do? Create a hell-ish environment in the institutions. Everything is in place. Labour will REALLY be able to wreak their identitarian havoc. Just wait and see. We’ll probably be asked to express our gender preferences through the medium of interpretive dance. And that’ll be the sensible option.
Seriously though – they’ll finish their revolution. And with it, the country. Nobody will be able to do a damn thing about it.
– Dr Philip Kiszely
But grinding poverty is, so far as ministers are concerned, a price worth paying for the cult of net zero. Few independent experts pretend that either solar power or wind power are remotely adequate for the needs of heating and powering a country of approaching 70 million people. We are facing this serious crisis because of the demented opposition to nuclear power that has taken root in the last 20 years – a bacillus that entered the Conservative Party’s bloodstream with the leadership of Dave Cameron – and a chronic determination to make promises about improving our environmental record that would undermine the economy of any advanced country that relies on the generation of electricity, the heating of buildings and water and, of course, on moving people and goods around from A to B.
– Simon Heffer
By Dr. Douglas Young, U. of N. GA-Gainesville political science professor emeritus
Pity Party Prince Harry and manipulative Miss Meghan Markle may well be the most narcissistic couple on the planet: endlessly self-absorbed, utterly oblivious to others’ feelings, and blaming everyone but themselves for all their “troubles.” And precisely what “injustices” do the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have to gripe about? Of the world’s eight billion folks, Meghan and Harry are easily among the richest one-tenth of one percent, two of the few thousand royals, as well as young, beautiful, and (physically at least) healthy to boot.
Perhaps their real problem is that they are typical well-heeled leftists: incredibly entitled, dangerously bored, cynically secular, and desperately in search of meaning. If they were not such fine-looking celebrities, who would give them a second look?
She comes across as entirely opportunistic and he appears bitter at not being even more privileged, actually calling his ghost-written memoir “Spare” since poor Harry is not first in line to be King. A little gratitude for all their huge blessings would likely help.
To be fair, and to his enormous credit, His Royal Highness assisted orphans in Lesotho, served in his country’s armed forces for a decade, and was a bona fide war hero in Afghanistan, having volunteered to be a helicopter gunner on many combat missions. His royal status could have easily shielded him from such deadly duty, but he sought out a very dangerous job in the fight against Islamic terrorism. After his military service, he went on to help wounded veterans.
So how ironic such a proven warrior gives the impression of being completely dominated by his social-climbing and ever-complaining wife. Indeed, the only other royal thought to have surrendered his autonomy so totally to “the woman I love” was Harry’s weak great-great uncle, Edward VIII. While Harry claims his penis once suffered frostbite at the North Pole, it sure looks like his testicles are locked securely in Meghan’s Strathberry handbag.
→ Continue reading: Harry and Meghan are the King and Queen of Narcissism
It’s quite wrong to suggest that the Conservative Party has not actually conserved anything. On the contrary, it has carefully conserved the legacy of the last Labour government so that the next Labour government will be able to pick up where it left off.
– Andrew Z
It’s a touching testament to the power of human irrationality that there are people who believe, with all the passion in their souls, that the Conservatives are a band of hard right-wingers. To believe that I suppose you have to believe that they are infinitely more incompetent than they are evil. After all, this supposedly anti-immigration, anti-environmental and authoritarian government has seen immigration soar to record levels, is pursuing net zero and has overseen a steep fall in crime detection and charge rates.
– Ben Sixsmith
“The UK has a complicated, punitive, badly constructed and all-around dysfunctional tax system.The code contains over 10 million words. That is about 12.5 times the number of words in the Bible (around 800,000 words), 12 times the number in the Complete Works of Shakespeare and 8 times as many as the longest novel ever written (Marcel Proust’s À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu).”
– Merryn Somerset Webb, financial columnist.
I do not know what this woman is accused of. [UPDATE: Commenter John did know, and linked to this Mark Steyn interview and this Mail story from October 2022.] It is always possible that things will look different if ever we get to hear the full story – not that Surrey Police seem inclined to tell us. But if this is half as bad as it looks, Caroline Farrow is right: it is important – and frightening.
To save space, and to keep a sequential record of them in case they disappear, I have written out the rest of the tweets in her thread as bullet points. The following was written by Caroline Farrow, not me:
—
On Monday afternoon my solicitor received a bizarre communication from Surrey police solicitors. He thought it had to do with my civil claim against them.
After some miscommunication, they sent through a bundle for a court hearing.
I am due in court tomorrow morning.
The police asked that “physical paperwork” relating to the court hearing against me in 2 days, was withheld from me.
They wanted me to go to a court hearing without access to the accusations and alleged evidence.
Surrey police have applied for a stalking protection order as a result of material I have posted on Twitter.
On page 1 of the bundle repeated misgendering is cited.
Here are the prohibitions they are seeking tomorrow morning.
I will be assigned an “offender manager”.
I will not be allowed to use any Social Media, Social Networking, Gaming, Dating (lol) site without this person’s written permission and having supplied them with usernames and passwords for all sites within 3 days.
In addition the following requirements are added:
1. Allow Police Officers to enter your registered address(es), between the hours of 8am and 8pm, to conduct a risk assessment, monitor devices, and manage compliance of the order
2. Provide your Offender Manager with any mobile, digital, or internet enabled devices for examination, review, and monitoring purposes, immediately upon request. You must also your provide your Offender Manager with any access PINs, passwords, or patterns. Examinations may be completed manually on scene, or could entail them seizing your device(s) for examination by agencies contracted by the police for that purpose. Failing to disclose the existence of a device in your possession to your Offender Manager will count as a failure to comply with this condition.
3. Re-register home address every 12 months at a Police Station (within 365 days of last registration).
4. Provide your Offender Manager with list of all mobile, digital, or internet enabled devices that you own or have access to use. The list must be provided within three days of the order being granted or within three days of any changes.
The police officer says this:
I believe that while presenting a significant interference with the respondent’s privacy rights, it is an appropriate course of action in the circumstances.
Signed by Surrey Police Superintendent
“I consider that in accordance with paragraph 2 of Article 8 of HRA, an interference by this force as a public authority is in accordance with the law and is necessary.”
I left out another condition Surrey police are asking for.
5. Possessing, owning or using more than one mobile phone and one SIM card, unless with written permission from your Offender Manager in the area that you reside. You must provide the telephone number and unique identifying numbers of all device(s) within three days of this order being granted or within three days of and supplying any changes within 3 days of any such change.
But I would not look for them first among the pilots. A survey of RAF personnel has revealed that confidence in the RAF chief and his leadership team has hit rock bottom, according to Sky News.
The figures will be a blow for Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, who is to step down as chief of the air staff on Friday – with his career likely to be remembered by a disastrous recruitment drive to improve diversity that disadvantaged white men.
Sky News revealed this week how applicants were dismissed as “useless white male pilots” – as pressure mounted to attract women and ethnic minorities – and that the RAF had to pay £5,000 each to 31 white men who were impacted by the policy.
It only stopped when, as first revealed by Sky News last August, the then head of recruitment resigned in protest at what she deemed to be an “unlawful order” to discriminate against white men.
There was one paragraph that had me scratching my head at first:
While much criticism has been directed at Air Chief Marshal Wigston over the adverse impact of his diversity drive on white men, the survey also found that the proportion of personnel who agreed that their leaders were committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace had dropped 15 percentage points to 57% since 2022.
What? Was it not the RAF’s leadership’s eyes-tight-shut commitment to “creating a diverse and inclusive workplace” that caused all the trouble? Given that they put this objective before the defence of the realm, don’t they at least get credit for sincerity on that, if nothing else?
No. They do not. The RAF personnel who have ceased to believe that their leaders truly desire diversity have reason on their side. These were not the actions of idealistic dreamers; they were the acts of careerists frightened they would end up on the wrong side of a denunciation meeting.
This is the fruit of a movement that propagates itself by intimidation. Intimidation gets compliance, but ever fewer believe that the wretches who must proclaim it actually believe it.
I like the style of this guy Gaius:
Readers are invited to supply Modualwoman with a list of other nations whose cultures are nonexistent because they have been influenced by foreign persons and ideas at any point in their history. I am sure she will want to tell them this herself. While she’s at it, she can inform everyone in Britain whose ancestors came here more recently than 1714 that they are still foreigners whatever their passport says.
When Wokes and Racists Actually Agree on Everything.
When you lose the big match, try to get the result declared void and run the match again. If you can’t get a rematch, try another game entirely and say that’s the one that matters.
“Citizens’ juries can help fix democracy”, writes Martin Wolf in the Financial Times.
Elections are necessary. But unbridled majoritarianism is a disaster. A successful liberal democracy requires constraining institutions: independent oversight over elections, an independent judiciary and an independent bureaucracy. But are they enough? No.
Thus far, I agree with him. For a moment I thought he was going to defend the rights of individuals against the tyranny of the majority. At one point in his life he would have done.
In my book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, I follow the Australian economist Nicholas Gruen in arguing for the addition of citizens’ assemblies or citizens’ juries. These would insert an important element of ancient Greek democracy into the parliamentary tradition.
There are two arguments for introducing sortition (lottery) into the political process. First, these assemblies would be more representative than professional politicians can ever be.
If your aim is to bypass professional politicians and improve representation, there is a better way than that to do it. With this method you don’t have to worry about how well or badly your representatives represent the population in terms of age, class, sex, race and so on. You can have perfect representation by cutting out the middleman and asking the voters themselves. It’s called a referendum. We have had several. The only slight caveat is that people expect the government to abide by them.
Second, it would temper the impact of political campaigning, nowadays made more distorting by the arts of advertising and the algorithms of social media.
A modest way to do this is to introduce citizens’ juries to advise on contentious issues. These juries would be time-limited, compensated for their time and be advised by experts.
Experts chosen by you.
One of the best examples was on the vexed topic of abortion in Ireland. A deliberative assembly of 100 people, made up of one appointed chair and 99 ordinary people chosen by lot, was established in 2016. It advised the Irish parliament on abortion (coming out in favour of “repeal and replace” of the ban then in force), and on the question to be put to the people in a referendum.
There are other difficult issues that might be (or might have been) handled in such a way: carbon taxation; nuclear power; and immigration. In these cases, a citizens’ jury would be empanelled to listen to witnesses and discuss the issues in depth. There is evidence that such a citizens’ jury would have come to a different decision on Brexit
Who could have seen that coming?
than in the referendum, since Leavers will change their minds in response to the evidence.
Evidence supplied by you.
This fad for citizen’s juries started six years, eleven months and ten days ago and will last as long as they can avoid convening one to give its verdict on what to do with illegal immigrants. With astute management, that might be years. We might be able to celebrate the triumph of the shiny new Citizen’s Juries and the abolition of the nasty, bigoted old sort of jury simultaneously.
|
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.
|
