[Scottish] Nationalist ideology struggles to integrate debatable lands like this one. Humza Yousaf has taken charge of a party which has become addicted to its fictions. By introducing its gender recognition reforms in the knowledge that the High Court of Justice would probably quash them (as it did), and deciding to treat the next general election as a “de facto referendum”, it was acting out a fantasy. The best hope for Scottish nationalism now is to separate itself from the cause of independence and to fight for a less lop-sided and unrealistic United Kingdom.
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April 1st, 2023 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The choice is between a quivering mound of turds who destroyed this country with their lockdown policies and a heap of wobbling turds who think the lockdown wasn’t destructive enough. I’d sooner lick the floor of my local A&E than vote for either of you. – Burnside March 31st, 2023 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
As a “lukewarmer”, I am more of a believer in climate change than many here. One thing that pulls me towards scepticism is the habitually dishonest language used by advocates of measures against climate change. Take this BBC article: “Climate change: UK risks losing investment in net-zero race, MPs warn”. It says,
The BBC article makes me want to riff on Mary McCarthy’s famous quip about Lillian Hellman – every word in it is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’. In particular, the words “race”, “investment” and “jobs” are all used in a sense that means the opposite of their usual meanings. “Investment” means something you buy in the hope that its price will rise so that you can sell it later as a profit. The “investment” the article talks about is simply spending. Argue if you wish that it is justified spending, but that doesn’t make it investment. The article, taking its tone from the government, talks about “green jobs” as if they are a good thing. As Tim Worstall often points out, all jobs are a cost not a benefit. Perhaps a necessary cost, but a cost. And the purest, costliest, unbeneficialliest jobs of all are jobs that are created solely to comply with government regulations. Not unexpectedly, the people who get these make-work jobs like having them, because they get paid. But the money to pay their wages has to come from somewhere. It comes from (a) taxes, i.e. making everyone a little bit poorer, and (b) companies diverting money that could have been truly invested in making or doing things that people actually wanted made or done (which would have created genuine new jobs) into the hamster-wheel of fulfilling green regulations, filling in government forms to say that they have done so, paying to be trained to fill out the forms, paying protection money to Green organisations to get a little green smiley logo saying they comply, and so on and on and on. What’s wrong of the word “race” in the phrase “net-zero race”? This word is dishonest because a race is meant to indicate a competition in which some prize or benefit is won by whoever is fastest – and in which said prize or benefit goes in lesser degree or not at all to the other competitors. In this case “the race to net-zero” is a race to lose benefits, a race in which the prize is being hobbled. That is still true even if one accepts the necessity of being hobbled. The choice of the US to hobble itself first by passing Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” (another example of dishonest language) hands a competitive advantage to the UK, so long as we do not do likewise. As to why the race to net zero is a racist concept, only a racist needs such an obvious thing explained. March 30th, 2023 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
To the majority of people who believe lockdowns were right and necessary, the Covid era was no doubt distressing, but it need not have been cause to re-order their perception of the world. Faced with a new and frightening disease, difficult decisions were taken by the people in charge but we came together and got through it; mistakes were made, but overall we did what we needed to do. For the dissenting minority, the past three years have been very different. We have had to grapple with the possibility that, through panic and philosophical confusion, our governing class contrived to make a bad situation much worse. Imagine living with the sense that the manifold evils of the lockdowns that we all now know — ripping up centuries-old traditions of freedom, interrupting a generation’s education, hastening the decline into decrepitude for millions of older people, destroying businesses and our health service, dividing families, saddling our economies with debt, fostering fear and alienation, attacking all the best things in life — needn’t have happened for anything like so long, if at all? March 23rd, 2023 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
We are now forewarned that the British government has chosen St. George’s Day, 23rd April 2023, to trial a new ‘alert’ system by sending alerts to the phones of everyone in the UK. It seems that you have to interact with the phone to stop it blaring a siren-like noise at you, and so acknowledge this impertinence. However, not all phones can receive these ‘alerts’. The functionality is limited:
But you can turn off these alerts on your phone (if you are socially-unfriendly):
Blimey, something the government acknowledges that it can’t help me with, is this a first? But what, pray, is this all for?
One might hope that severe flooding and fires would be incompatible, but perhaps with the climate emergency, Mr Sunak will set the Thames on fire. And the form of this message? Not exactly:
OK, but what should I do if I get an ‘alert’?
But does this apply to say, surgeons in an operating theatre? This is not mentioned. And wait, what if I am…
Well at least that’s clear… What is the legal basis for the government taking this power, and why is this not explained? And presumably, if there’s someone running amok with knives or guns, this won’t be part of the alert system, when it might actually be unexpected, unlike the weather. I can see where this is going. It will eventually be used to warn people that Nigel Farage is making a speech locally and that they should stay indoors and not follow the event on social media. Sorry, I was being overly cynical there, I have seen this:
That’s good to know, I had been wondering if it would. And I am pleased to hear that I won’t be getting messages from Robert Spencer if there is a certain type of rare incident in the locality. Then again, what if there is a hippo on the loose? Is there a template alert message for that, if not, why not? Are you seriously trying to protect us? Will it sound if there is, say, an unexpected landing on a beach by persons unknown? Around 35 years ago, the late Auberon Waugh said that people only go into politics for the pleasure of pressing switches and watching us all jump. This figure of speech has become reality. March 19th, 2023 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
Oxfam has come a long way since it was founded 81 years ago. There was a time in the dim and distant past when its primary purpose was to raise money from well-meaning, relatively affluent folks and use their donations to assuage the hunger pangs of the poor and downtrodden across the globe. It was a worthy cause. Those days are long over. For some time now it’s been more associated with Left-wing agitprop than famine relief. Indeed, you almost get the impression feeding the famished is now seen by some in Oxfam as an annoying diversion from the far more important work of political activism. – Andrew Neill, of whom I am not a great fan overall but this is certainly true. March 19th, 2023 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Humza Yousaf reported to police for breaking his own hate crime law”, reports Guido Fawkes with pardonable glee:
Mr Yousaf is presently the Health Secretary for the SNP government in Scotland, and is probably the leading candidate to replace Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the scandal-ridden Scottish National Party. Given the events of the last twenty-four hours, I wonder whether Mr Yousaf might not prefer to lose. Given that the man known as “Humza Useless” would be a useless leader of a party I despise, I am not sure whether I might not prefer him to win. He certainly deserves to lose. The following link takes you to previous Samizdata posts with Humza’s name in them, dating from his time as Scottish Justice Secretary and chief incubator of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. Yousaf was the man who decreed that there should be no exemption for prosecution for hateful speech and conduct just because it took place in a private dwelling. March 18th, 2023 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Why does everything have to be justified on the basis that it will help the NHS? Especially when the NHS is failing its patients so badly? UK healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP now ranks fifth highest in the OECD, yet the system isn’t delivering even the most basic forms of care. Some 2.7 million people are sitting anxiously on the waiting list. March 17th, 2023 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
I was going to put this into a comment on Patrick Crozier’s excellent item about Gary Lineker, the UK former footballer, and now TV show presenter (and enthusiastic Tweeter). But as the comment was chunky I am taking the liberty of putting it here. On social media I come across the argument that Lineker hosts a sports programme, not a current affairs show about politics, so he’s not causing a problem by taking heated positions on a private twitter account. There are several problems with this line of reasoning. Football these days is, alas, political. Maybe it always has been – even George Orwell disliked international games because he thought it stoked rather than reduced national ill feeling. Today, footballers have “taken the knee” over the Black Lives Matter eruptions, for example, or spoken about the Qatar World Cup and the row about maltreatment of stadium construction workers. There is a new UK government regulator of football (dealing with issues such as the finances of the game), and that is bound to be a political issue that a pundit like Lineker will want to talk about. Four years after Russia annexed Crimea, Lineker and the rest were in Russia to commentate on the World Cup of 2018. The footballing body, FIFA, was the centre of a massive corruption scandal. Brexit affected European football, such as because of the UK’s exit from the Single Market and the consequent impact on free movement and labour market contracts. And so on. Why mention all this? Because it will not do for Lineker to say his role has nothing to do with politics so it’s okay to slag off the UK government or whatever on A or B, particularly in harsh language. That is why his principal, if not sole employer – the BBC – is entitled to ask him to tone it down on social media, or at least issue some small disclaimer along the lines “my views aren’t necessarily shared by the BBC” sort. The BBC is paid for by a tax known as the licence fee. In its charter, it has to uphold impartiality as part of the bargain, although in reality this is very hard to achieve consistently (which is why I think the fee needs to go). For those who aren’t in such a role, or who have an independent income, they are freer to upset, provoke and delight anyone with equal measure. (This is also a reason why protecting savings from inflation is good precisely because it makes independent sources of income easier.) But where a certain stance comes with the day job, then a contract of employment/service is entitled to contain some form of words about certain pronouncements. For Lineker, unfortunately, the “beautiful game” is no longer just about men (now women) kicking a bag of air around. Final point: It is not as if Lineker, in condemning UK policy on illegal migrants, was adopting a particularly brave or original stance. His views are standard “liberal” boilerplate. I cannot imagine Lineker saying “Net Zero is BS”, or “All Lives Matter” or “Brussels is out of control” or “gender is not a social construct”. Go on Gary, prove me wrong. March 11th, 2023 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a bit of a kerfuffle here in England. National hero, sports presenter and self-appointed moral authority Gary Lineker reacted to government plans to reduce illegal immigration by posting a tweet which could be construed to suggest that he thought they – that’s the government not the illegal immigrants – were a bunch of Nazis. His employers – the sinister British Broadcasting Corporation – have suspended him. His colleagues have walked out in solidarity which means that today’s edition of Match of the Day – a football highlights show which Lineker presents – will be very odd indeed. Some thoughts:
March 11th, 2023 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
Finally, a Labour government will be very, very funny. We’ll enjoy Keir Starmer frantically attempting to make sense of his little bag of contradictions. We’ll eat popcorn as the Corbynites feud with the New Labour nostalgists. We’ll watch MPs who can barely spell “policy” do policy (of course, that’s nothing new but it will be fun to have a different cast of characters). This might be small consolation, but what is life without morbid comedy? February 28th, 2023 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
What I love about this new encryption law is how much easier it will be for foreign governments to spy on British citizens and enterprises now that Britain has unilaterally disarmed. – Perry Metzger February 27th, 2023 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
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