Natalie Solent |
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Politics, news, libertarianism, Science Fiction, religion, sewing.
You got a problem, bud? I like sewing.
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Friday, December 24, 2004
Just in case anyone was worried. If I do not post between now and around January the fifth it is absolutely not because I am celebrating Christmas and the New Year with family and friends. It will be because I have been sucked up the left upper pseudonostril of a passing gravitic marmoset. The mountains have laboured and given forth a mouse. Via Instapundit I was led to this article in Scientific American. It says that most of the positive effects claimed for high self esteem either are not true, or are correlations with causation not proved. The only ones that really stand up are the links between self esteem and the ability to initiate relationships and between self esteem and general happiness. Much as I like being a introverted, chronically guilt-ridden, marginally agoraphobic miserable git, I pronounce no general anathema against either being able to talk to people or happiness. Some people like living that way.
The image that sticks in my mind, though, is of all those housands of studies, books, seminars, courses, programmes, lectures... and it all boils down to something grandma could have told you in 1898. Thursday, December 23, 2004
Waiting for Monibot. You all remember the famous Pentagon report on global warming? The report about which the authors said, "Contrary to some recent media coverage, the report was not secret, suppressed, or predictive." Fear not. I shall spare you the Holy Roman Empire joke. All I'm going to say is that many of us were grieved to see that dear old Monibot at the Guardian had not heard the news.
Rob at Semiskinned put him right. He is now awaiting a reply. I take this to mean that he is aware of the inaccuracy of the sources he used for his original article and will rush to issue an update in the Guardian and/or on his own site correcting the gaffe. I cannot conceive how it could be otherwise.Ah, but what if the non-arrival of that correction turns out to be a dramatic necessity... Gogo: [Remembering] OH! We have to go back there. [beckons to the stage]. We'll miss Godot. He will be here soon.
UPDATE: Peter Briffa writes: Actually, his name is Moonbat.Futz it. I've written Moonbat too often. Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Yeah, yeah, rivers of blood, whatever. I read stuff like I'm writing now for years, and I thought it no more than a cynical ploy. Show me someone wittering on with about "avoiding a backlash", said I, and I'll show you a sub-Powellite racist who wants a respectable-sounding reason to deny minorities their rights. I don't know if anything I can say now will be more convincing than what I read back then, but here is my best shot: people whose own culture is denigrated and supressed do not generally become more tolerant of other cultures thereby. Other than the Aztecs, whose behaviour to strangers in their midst was somewhat improved by the complete extirpation of Aztec religion by the conquering Spaniards, I can't think of any other poster children for the success of this policy.
Rather more generally applicable are Jim Bennett's justly famous words: Democracy, Immigration, Multiculturalism - pick any two. Down with Scrooge. Anthony Browne writes in defence of Christmas. Proper Christmas with Christ in. Mr Browne is an atheist. He says that it's not Muslims, Hindus or Sikhs who seek to edit out every image of stable, star or baby. As each story about editing out Christmas arose I have specifically looked to see who the prime movers were, and I say he's right: the anti-freedom factions within minority religions in Britain often seek to silence criticism of their own religions, but rarely to silence Christianity. All but the most extreme correctly see that in these matters religions had better hang together lest they hang separately. No, the real Christophobes are the self-loathing, guilt-ridden politically-correct liberal elite, driven by anti-Christian bigotry and a ruthless determination to destroy their own heritage and replace it with "the other". It is the American Civil Liberties Union that is threatening lawsuits against any schools that allow the singing of carols and the BBC’s editorial policy bans criticism of the Koran, but not the Bible.How strange it is that the people who say that the Islamic world hates the West because of the West's alleged lack of respect for Islamic tradition are so often the same people who see no danger to minorities in supressing the traditions of this country in the name of minorities. I hope to God that the Muslim Council of Britain contines to protest that such initiatives as banning hot cross buns or The Three Little Pigs are "bizarre", and that its protests are widely reported. No more English, no more French / No more sitting on the old school bench... Ross Douthat, guestblogging for Andrew Sullivan, writes: Suppose you tried to universalize college education -- how many people would actually go for it? At present, a little over a quarter of all Americans have college degrees, and around half try college for a while but never graduate. No doubt a lot of these people drop out, or never go, for financial reasons, and having government-subsidized college tuition would certainly raise both matriculation and graduation rates appreciably. But I'm not sure the rates would be raised to anywhere near universal levels. I think that many, many people drop out or don't go to college because they don't want to go . . . because they've spent a dozen years in school, they don't like school, and they want to get out into the world and start making money.Of course once they've seen the world and made the money, a spell back on the old school bench might start to appeal. When I was teaching unruly secondary school pupils I often thought how helpful it would be to have adult pupils in the class. Most of the help would come from their mere presence. Monday, December 20, 2004
Too angry about identity cards to blog much about it. I know I've quoted this before, but it will stand saying twice. On December 27th 1944 a Mr Antony Wells wrote to the Times as follows:
Sir, -While obtaining, recently, a National Registration identity card for my small daughter, I remarked that it was pleasant to think all this bothersome business would soon no longer be necessary. I was blandly informed by the clerk that my expectation was quite wrong, since registration was to continue after the war. On looking at the card in my hand, I discovered it was valid until 1960.The Enemy Class never give up. A dilemma concerning free speech and religion. No, I'm not talking about the theatre surrendering to the mob. That one has been settled in obedience to the word of that god before whom every modern knee doth bow: The theatre said it had refused to censor the work and was abandoning it purely on health and safety grounds.So that's all right then. Let us turn to the case I did want to talk about. It is reported in the Richmond and Twickenham Times of 3 December that A CHISWICK man has had an injunction taken out against him after he was accused of bombarding members of the Mormons with phone calls and text messages to tempt them from their faith.Ho ho! The biter bit! But it's not really that funny. What this guy was doing clearly did amount to persecution. Although an unwilling recipient of a Mormon missionary couple's knock may resent the minute it takes to send them on their way, the fact that it is a minute and not three hours is crucial.
Yet I feel sorry for Price. He faces a legal bill of thirty thousand pounds. Better for him and his victims if he had faced a smaller punishment sooner. (A thing I often say in all sorts of contexts.)
It would be an ill day if door-to-door evangelists or, indeed, candidates for election or door-to-door salesmen, were forbidden to do what they do. Imagine a zero tolerance regime for doorstep canvassing. You get into a political argument with your work colleague while driving her home from the office Christmas do. You drop her home, polite but tense, neither she nor you wanting to come out and say that you really have quarrelled. She steps inside her front door and it clicks shut - you think of an absolutely conclusive point - and half-meaning to carry it off as a joke but wanting at the same time to land a verbal punch, you ring the bell - she answers, thinking she has forgotten hat or gloves - you smirk and say rather louder than you intended, "And another thing..."
And you are up in court the following morning.
Low blogging alert! Christmas 'n' stuff. Ritual swapping of tokens. Parties. I posted this minor Samizdata QOTD from his party, where I completely spontaneously started blathering on about his famous coffee jars, unaware of his post. Can this be coincidence? Thursday, December 16, 2004
Not content with apologising for Palestinian support for Saddam's invasion of Kuwait (see this post), now Mahmoud Abbas has said publicly that the Intifada was a mistake. If you had asked me a year ago when I might have a good word to say about that holocaust denier, I'd have said, "on a cold day in Hell." In the absence of an official weather report from the Infernal Regions, I'll have to assume the demons put their winter woolies on today. Free debate at St Andrews is not yet dead, despite the previous post. I followed a link or two from the St Andrews Student Union website and found this article in a different student newspaper: 10 Reasons Why Iraqis Would Have Voted for President George W. Bush. I thought it would be good to offer an Iraqi perspective regarding the current events taking place in Iraq with the war aftermath and reconstruction efforts. Born and raised in Iraq until I was 15 years old, the views I have about what is happening in my country reflect those of the majority of Iraqis. Two snapshots of British state education today (1) The Students' Union at St Andrews has banned a student newspaper, The Saint, because, in the words of the Union, "The Saint's last two issues have included a number of offensive comments as well as misleading statements concerning amongst other groups, the University's LGBT students, dyslexics and the Welsh".
Lots of good jokes about dyslexic Welshmen in the Samizdata comments. None about bisexual dyslexic Welshpersons yet, although there is one about a leek.
(2) Via Joanne Jacobs, Kimberly Swygert and Manchester Online, I found a splendid example of Object Fetishism. Manchester Online says that: PENCIL sharpeners have been banned from a primary school after a pupil dismantled one and used the blade to slash another child's neck. The victim was attacked in the playground at Waterloo Primary School in Ashton under Lyne. Kimberly Swygert comments: A two-day suspension for deliberately striking near someone's jugular with a razor-sharp object? And the offender is allowed to return, while the sharp objects are not? You have got to be kidding me. 'Fraid not. You must understand that pencil sharpeners disrupt the flow of mana. Things with unbalanced mana are tabu. (Mind you, that website says that one of the ways in which you can dissipate or unbalance your mana is "agreeing to be a teacher for a student who did not want to learn." Since slashing a classmate's neck does not suggest a thirst for learning, maybe the Waterloo Primary staff ought to declare themselves tabu.) ...the decision to allow the boy to return to school has angered parents. Some have signed a petition calling on the school to permanently expel the youngster. One parent, who did not wish to be named, said: "Are our children safe when we send them through those gates every morning? The lad purposely took the blade out of the sharpener. In my eyes that is a pre-meditated attack. My children know the difference between right and wrong. To suspend that boy for just two days is no punishment at all."There are some good comments to the Manchester Online article, a lot of them from the US. My guess is that many of them came via Joanne Jacobs and Kimberly Swygert. The story made the Sun and the BBC. Also the blog Zero Intelligence - "Fighting school board inanity since 2004" -
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Representation. Tim Worstall called his post on this article by would-be MP Hannah Pool "Gi's a job." Fair enough. Most of the article consists of her plaints about the reluctance of Labour selection committees to select her. She is cross that she, a black woman, doesn't score double on the shortlist. My opinion of Labour selection committees has just gone up. Unless and until Ms Pool stops talking like an eighteenth century Tory oligarch in a rotten borough, the committee would be ill-advised to pick her as a candidate. She speaks of "stealing each other's seats" as if the seats concerned had been assigned to black female representatives of the Labour Party by God and the only problem lay in unseemly squabbles between His representatives on Earth, Operation Black Vote and the Fawcett Society. Hey, lady, these seats we're talking about are not mere property like Jasper Conran dining chairs! The voters have some role in this, remember? Tim Worstall quotes her as saying: There are just two black women MPs, both Labour (Diane Abbott and Oona King), of 13 black MPs, 119 women and 659 MPs in total. That's right, two. Given that there are well over 2 million ethnic-minority women in this country, that's an awful lot of representation left to Abbott and King. He comments: MPs represent their constituents, not some class, race or sex. That’s why we have constituencies, see, instead of national voting lists and such. Sheesh. I have it on good authority that Ian Paisley, who once scornfully called the Catholic Sacrament "a biscuit", faithfully works to solve the daily problems of his Catholic constituents. From her words here, can you imagine a future Hannah Pool MP doing as much for her white, Asian or male (including black male) constituents? Selection committees know that these are the people she must appeal to. There aren't enough black females to elect an MP on their own in any seat in the UK, especially given that some of them may fail to agree with Ms Pool's advanced views on the nature of representation and vote for someone else on political grounds. Her logic takes us to some ugly places. By Hannah Pool's arguments we can never have a black Prime Minister in the UK. Or ever again have a Prime Minister of a minority race or religion. (Tough luck, Michael Howard. And we'll have to airbrush out Benjamin Disraeli.) We cannot even have any more black MPs once the number equal to their proportion in the population has been reached. By Hannah Pool's arguments the existing black female MPs, Diane Abbott and Oona King, do not represent their white, brown or male constituents. I know little about Oona King (other than that she'll be fighting George Galloway in the next election, best of luck to her) but I bet that wasn't what she said on her election leaflets to the citizens of Bethnal Green & Bow. As for Ms Abbott, I am no admirer of hers politically but I can testify she knows her duties better than that. I once spent a morning sitting a few feet from her in a Parliamentary Committee. The questions she put, while sometimes based on wrong assumptions, flowed from her role as an overseer of the UK's public spending, not from her role as a black woman. She talks about that role a lot but is not limited to it. It's a bit rich, Hannah Pool complaining about how horrible it is to have everyone pre-judging your responses because of your race or gender If the debate is about women's equality, we are expected to agree with white women because they are women; if the debate is about race, we are expected to agree with black men.and then demanding to go to the front of the queue because of her race and gender. As I have said elsewhere, I take "democracy is the least worst form of government" literally. I am a democrat faute de mieux. I would like to see a world where people put serious matters to the vote rather in the way that they now sue a neighbour: reluctantly, embarrassed that it has come to this bitter juncture, and that not merely because the law is expensive and uncertain, but from a perception that fundamentally, this is not how relations between people should be. Force should be a last resort. Thus it makes me smile in a sardonic way when Ms Pool writes: What I resent most about the current debate is that, once again, someone is making decisions on my behalf: Labour women are assuming I'd rather be represented by a woman, OBV is assuming I'd rather be represented by a black man.And you, Ms Pool, are assuming that the voters would rather be represented by you. Perhaps they would, perhaps they wouldn't. But if you so object to people making decisions on others' behalf then how do you justify your desire to stand as a elected representative? Isn't that what they do? The terrors of old age. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are in the news. My opinions on this aren't completely black and white. If one concedes, as I, wincing, do, a right to suicide, then it seems logical to concede a right to assisted suicide for those too incapacitated to kill themselves. However, here is an anecdote, told to me first-hand, which demonstrates that legalised euthanasia on the Dutch model affects the quality of life of old people in ways that the "beautiful death" campaigners did not anticipate.
A decade or so ago a member of my family was living in Holland and working as a care assistant at a Dutch old people's home. (She speaks Dutch.) She told me that when the time came to give some of the old men and women their medicine they would occasionally react with terror. "No, no," they would cry, "not the pill!"
What some cried aloud many more, particularly those whose minds were failing, must have feared in silence. He ain't changed. Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman came out in 1980. I first read it in the late eighties. Back then the name of the fellow mentioned at the end of this passage meant nothing to me: Few businessmen regard President Carter's so-called voluntary wage and price controls as a desirable or effective way to combat inflation. Yet one businessman after another, one business organization after another, has paid lip service to the program, said nice things about it, and promised to cooperate. Only a few, like Donald Rumsfeld, former congressman, White House official, and Cabinet member, had the courage to denounce it publicly.Random Jottings comments on Rumsfeld today. Monday, December 13, 2004
"The normal person shouldn't have to bother with it. That's what we pay government ministers for." In a post about fishing and the tragedy of the commons the EU Serf found that damning quote from a Guardian writer. In fact, as the Serf had already pointed out earlier in the post, there is a way in which the normal person can make nuanced and environmentally-appropriate decisions about which fish to buy without spending hours in study or passing the buck to an authority figure: I know that it is a heresy in the hallowed corridors of liberalism, but consumers are empowered by a form of knowledge transfer known as pricing. If a real market existed in fish, the rare ones would cost more. Thus someone whose knowledge of fish stocks was zero, would make the right choice as to what to buy. Controversial I know, but it seems to work everywhere else. The Kuwait Times reports that Abbas apologised to Kuwait on behalf of the PLO for Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Palestinian support for the invasion of Kuwait managed to be grossly cynical and grossly stupid at the same time. I don't suppose one Palestinian in a hundred cared one way or the other about Iraq's territorial claim on Kuwait prior to the invasion. Kuwait had, as far as I know, never done anything to them other than give them piles of money. The piles of money probably didn't do their politial culture any good, but somehow I doubt that a sophisticated realisation of this fact was what drove crowds of Palestinians onto the street to cheer the invader on. The best excuse I can come up with is that the cheering mobs were no better informed and no less dangerous not to join than the cheering mobs of China's Cultural Revolution.
And what did Saddam Hussein offer them in exchange for this slavish display? The Right of Return? Not exactly. A handful of missiles. A handful of dead Israelis. It's as if a man helped a mugger beat up his rich uncle in exchange for the mugger spitting at his enemy.
Yeah, I know. Some Kuwaitis can put on an impressive display of ingratitude themselves. However "some" is obviously far from "all".
(Via, indirectly, The Corner.) Tim Blair has a new place at http://timblair.net/weblog.php. You have to register to comment. "This is intended to cut down on insidious anony-trolling. All you need do is provide a genuine e-mail address, a birth certificate, and a vial of spinal fluid. " Sunday, December 12, 2004
Not too good to check after all. Sam writes: Here is the likely original, by that mainstay of rec.arts.sf.* groups, John Schilling: link.Yes, but is it true? Anti-Tsarist revolutionaries in Britain. Nigel writes: By a coincidence I've just finished reading the revised edition of Donald Rumbelow's 'The Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney Street'. This starts off with a chapter on the Tottenham Outrage before going on to the perhaps more famous events two years later that form the core of the book. Friday, December 10, 2004
A distant mirror. This is about the American presidential election... of 1864. Not even the crisis of a war for the survival of the Union itself could disturb this sacred democratic ritual, but what is really astounding is that the man who opposed Lincoln's re-election was a general - none other than McClellan himself, no longer holding a command, but still adopting an inappropriate air of martial glory. With Grant and Lee firmly locked in their decisive combat, and Sherman shortly to begin his march to the sea, McClellan stood on a platform of negotiated peace, based on the assumption (though he carefully refrained from saying so himself) that the war was a failure. And ... The soldiers did not, in any significant numbers, try to vote themselves out of the war. Their vote went to Lincoln by four to one - far more than can be accounted for by manipulation or fraud, though both were undoubtedly present. And the Union prevailed in the war, after all. (From The Smoke and the Fire by John Terraine) Thursday, December 09, 2004
Secrets of the book trade revealed. The Scotsman is bemused as to why big name media memoirs aren't selling. David Farrer can explain. Shades of Ann Coulter's Slander. It shouldn't be our shrouds versus their shrouds. There was a lot that was relevant to the guns and violence debate in the Telegraph of December 6th. While it is true that the killers of disc-jockey Tushar Makwana did not use guns, in an armed society the gang probably would not have used the same modus operandi: The court was told that the four teenagers - Michael McGuire, 18, Ashley Cooksey, 18, Brett Frewin, 17, and Matthew Jeffrey, 17 - were involved in a series of similar raids on houses in the area, which involved kicking down the front door, stealing the owners' car keys and taking their cars.And "They acted as a group. They were not scared or worried in any way.Since the trial is still in progress I ought to say that the defendants named have pleaded Not Guilty. Still, someone killed Mr Makwana as he tried to stop them taking his car, they having attacked his home in the manner described. In that day's Telegraph there was also a very widely linked column by Mark Steyn: "An Englishman's home is his dungeon."
Finally there was an article about the Hungerford gun massacre of 1987, quoting several survivors: "Ryan shot at me, then at my mother." A BBC TV programme about the killing was screened the day the article appeared. The article quotes a senior policeman: "It was a very frightening scenario," admits the commanding officer, Charles Pollard, in the film.I think this is right. They did the best they could in a dreadful and utterly unexpected situation. However one reason why, in contrast it must be said to nearly all British survivors of spree killings, I do not agree with the programme's conclusion that the way to prevent these things is to outlaw weaponry can be found in another account of a chaotic and terrifying pursuit of murderous armed men across a wide area. The Tottenham Outrage of January 1909 made headlines all over the country. Although, as the account from the Metropolitan Police website I have linked to says, some elements of the multi-vehicle pursuit of two anarchist payroll robbers did become "almost farcical", there was nothing funny about the ruthlessness the criminals showed. They were not outright maniacs like Michael Ryan, the Hungerford killer, but they killed a ten year old boy. They killed, at point blank range, a policeman who called upon them to surrender. Before they were cornered Paul Hefeld and Jacob Lepidus injured twenty-one people and fired over 400 rounds. Other versions put the tally of injured at twenty-seven.
What that account does not say, (perhaps deliberately, seeing as its a police site) is that the police borrowed no less than four pistols from passerby. This fact is quoted in Richard Munday and Jan Stevenson's book Guns and Violence, reviewed here. The police account also does not say, though it does hint, that numerous civilians joined in the hue and cry - that ancient tradition was not quite dead then. According to this BBC Notes and Queries page: By now the pursuing mob had also got guns and a volley of shots were exchanged as the robbers fled over Tottenham marshes. One cannot know, but it seems very reasonable to me that if there had been an armed populace in Hungerford in 1987, as there was in Tottenham in 1909, the death toll would have been much lower. That is why I do not think that a tendency I see even in pro-gun writing, namely to count victims of "hot" burglaries etc. on one side and victims of spree killers on the other and then to ask which are the more numerous - the "our shrouds versus their shrouds" I referred to in the title of this post - is helpful. First off, of course, is that all sides of the debate should be equally concerned about all victims. Few would disagree with me in that. Secondly, I think that spree killings are also examples of situations where it would help, not harm, if more people were armed. However the correlation is weak because spree killings are, thank God, at the very extreme of human behaviour. Fatal burglaries are much more common and it is easier to generalise about them.
Few of the arguments I make about Hungerford would have made much difference to the death toll of the Dunblane massacre. More about that in a future post.
UPDATE: Apparently a book has been written about the Tottenham Outrage, by Janet Harris.
Ronco, Ronco, Rah! Rah! Rah! John Costello writes: You mean to say you actually had Ronco in Old Blighty! But it was so, so... American! When I was watching Flash Gordon (the TV series, not the movie serial) out of Channel 9 in New Hampshire (I had to hold the antenna in a certain way so I could see it thorugh the fuzz) back in the 60s RONCO brought me Flash and other 1950s series. Remember the Ronco Vegematic? "And now, if you order this today, we'll include this 20 piece aluminum (or stainless steel) set of pans for just $19.99* extra, plus shipping and handeling! Yes, ladies and gentlemen..." It was the alleged owner on the TV (and I read later that it really was him) who did the sales pitch in a New Jersey accent.A sort of all-purpose southern English accent as far as I recall. A TV accent. TV was more of a challenge then. My family, wishing to take some sort of middle way between having a TV and not having one, compromised by having the oldest TV on the street. I am sure that this made me a stronger, hardier person. Channels were changed by turning a dial with all the care of a master cracksman opening the safe of the Bank of England. Our TV would only get ITV for about a forty seconds at a time before going wiggly. Good, said my parents with Roman sterness: in those days the BBC was considered more wholesome. As a result for my first few years of viewership I only ever saw adverts at the houses of friends. Gosh, how I adored those adverts. The one for the K-Tel gadget that allowed you to chop off the tops of broken bottles and re-use them as drinking glasses; what artistry! This ad recently featured in one of those "hundred best adverts" programmes. Some guy reminisced with many a chuckle about how his Dad got one and chopped his lips off. Mr Costello says that Ronco are still going strong in the US. Here are some products. In fairness to what seems to be a family business, I must say that they seem much like anyone else's products. That is actually my real opinion, although I would say it anyway because I'm afraid of getting sued. (By the amazing, all-new Ligitomatic. Claims, appeals and settles out of court in one smooth action!) This guy isn't. Wednesday, December 08, 2004
The deserter's story. Private Jenkins went over to North Korea the year that I was born. Now he's back. Jonah Goldberg is right to say "He wasted his whole life, and regretted his decision every day. I was glad to see the army went relatively easy on the guy -- dishonorable discharge, demotion, but only 25 days in the stockade -- while still upholding the principle that what he did was unforgivable. He reportedly had to share as much intelligence as he could as well. If he'd spent the last forty years living it up in a Russian dacha, I would have been glad to see him spend the remainder of his days behind bars. But this seems like the right call to me."
I should have buttoned my lip. (Wait patiently for the point of this title.) If you are American and your washing machine says flobadob and widdles all over the floor what do you do?
Blame George W Bush, obviously. But after that? John Weidner (daringly skipping the blame-Bush stage) goes to this site and looks up how to repair it. In the comments he compares the pleasure he gets from working his will on a recalcitrant domestic appliance to the triumph a caveman felt when slaying a mastodon. RepairClinic.com seems to make its money by shipping parts, but attracts customers through the door by offering information. From a Repair Guru, no less. Plenty more use than most gurus.
I am sure there are all sorts of fascinating sociological observations and predictions to be made here.
Here in the UK, EzeeFix and E-spares both offer the parts but not the education - yet.
Google and Ebay do make owning non-standard or obsolete kit less of a problem. Let me tell you an anecdote that doesn't illustrate that at all. I was in the sewing shop yesterday and a lady came in and asked for spares for her decades-old home button-attaching machine - almost certainly the K-Tel Buttonmatic. Ah, K-Tel. Breathe deep, my fortysomething friends, breathe deep and remember when K-Tel and Ronco were mainstays of ITV commercial breaks. As it says in the link, in those innocent days the words "as advertised on TV" carried a glamour of their own.
Anyway, this lady wanted to use her Buttonmatic for some sort of charity garment-making sewathon in which she was to participate. Good idea, when you think about it. It may have taken four decades but eventually an occasion finally has arisen when this so-called timesaving gadget really would save time, if only the right spare parts could be found.
The sewing shop man didn't have them, but "go to the internet," he helpfully advised, "you can order all sorts of funny things there."
"Oh yes, that's true," I said. And winced. Indeed he spoke sooth. In days gone by I would have ordered the non-standard bobbins my sewing machine uses from his shop and got them in mere weeks. Instead I had that very day got a bunch of them direct from the Singer website, ordered two days previously.
Sadly I think that the charity button-fixing lady is going to be out of luck. (Hence the title of this post! You waited patiently. Well done.) Apart from two 70s nostalgia sites the internet is clear of K-Tel Buttonmatics. I have just now tripled the number of times the device is mentioned. Come to think of it, it occurs to me that for that very reason it is highly probable that, assuming she followed advice and looked it up on the internet, she is reading this. Um, hello. Forgive me for using your ingenious and charitable idea as a peg for my meanderings. Unfortunately I have to tell you that although both this and this bear the sacred name "Buttonmatic", the former is an industrial machine designed for clothing manufacturers and the latter a sewing machine foot. It's not nearly as cool as finally using the K-Tel, an anecdote upon which you could dine out for years, but if you do have a sewing machine with a button foot your best bet is probably to lug that along to the charity event.
So there are still markets that internet commerce has not yet reached. A pity. Surely there must be many dozens of people out there yearning for spare parts for the true K-Tel Buttonmatic. Tens of pence are waiting to be made by a young man or woman with vision. Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Rogue vacuum pockets peril. As Rob at the Sporadic Chronicle observes, this story is far too good to check. The Last Train. Sad to see, like the Britannia class Pacific 70013 Oliver Cromwell pulling into Liverpool Lime Street Station for the last time and bringing the era of steam trains on British railways to an end, Transport Blog is to cease operations. Patrick Crozier writes: I have said more or less everything I have to say on the topic. OK, we never quite got round to finding the "why doesn't vertical fragmentation work on the railways?" Holy Grail and "Beeching II - no more Mr Nice Guy" will have to remain unpublished for a little longer but my views on road pricing, rail "privatisation" and positive externalities are, at least, out there.Phrases like "Beeching II - no more Mr Nice Guy" were one of the many reasons that Transport Blog was well worth looking at. There were more serious reasons as well - discussion of safety issues, economics and even aesthetics relating to transport from a libertarian angle. Nonetheless, it is true that the limited nature of the topic meant that I was only an occasional visitor. It strikes me that the archive is a valuable resource to have online - so much so that when I clean up my sidebar (real soon now) the link will stay there with some sort of a note to say it's no longer an active blog. Finally I hope that Patrick uses the excellent two-column format with longer pieces on one side and "in brief" items on the other in his future work.
Monday, December 06, 2004
The Home Secretary's private life is none of our business, I just wish he'd think the same about ours. I owe that devastating point to this post by Chris Lightfoot: "Someone had blundered." He had other points to make as well. You know, of course, how law-abiding people have nothing to fear from identity cards? How about fearing this: Hilariously, they haven't even fixed s.12(4) in which BTW, I linked to Chris Lightfoot in a slightly less admiring fashion when replying to John B in an earlier post. Probably it was no coincidence that John B then linked to this new post by Chris Lightfoot, and certainly it was no coincidence that I found it by looking at John B's blog. I expect that if one follows the link trail closely enough it will turn out that one or both of them is actually my grandfather.
Yet more quick thoughts on self-defence. Don't get excited that the commissioner of the metropolitan police and the Conservative party have called for reform of the law. People call for this, that and the other all day long. So do the blackbirds. Oh, I'm a cheery little thing.
On the same subject, John B. of Shot By Both Sides writes back: Thanks very much for replying to my mail.Well, yeah, in the end statistics, properly used, do trump anecdote. I am the first to argue that an incorrect opinion does not become correct because it is deeply felt, or because the holder of the opinion has suffered, or because the holder is a good person. But even if I were to concede (I don't) that we have the State to thank for the day-to-day survival of Britons from general mayhem, it is undeniable that the British State has protected its citizens from murder less well since the right to self-defence has been eclipsed. What are blogs for if not to point out possible errors in a Religious Studies textbook published in 1991? I've been reading a lot of RE textbooks for a worky sort of reason. Now quite a lot of the propaganda has been chased out of history and geography textbooks - stop laughing. Disregard your own fading memories, you crinklies, and look at, say, a recent schoolbook treatment of British generalship in World War I: John Terraine's point of view is well and truly represented, albeit by people who clearly needed a nice cup of herbal tea afterwards. However RE, RS, or whatever they call it this week, is unreformed. I may highlight some of the funnier things I've found in future posts. Or I may be found slumped lifeless at my computer, an expression of unearthly terror stamped indelibly upon my features. I tell you, to have opinions like mine and yet open a Key Stage Four Religious Thingies book is to stare into the abyss. I quite liked the oldish textbook I shall look at today, Moral Issues in Six Religions, edited by W. Owen Cole and published by Heinemann Educational. Its format, in which each religion is written about by an author who believes in that religion, avoids the anonymous blah-progressive editorialising that mars many modern textbooks on religion. Most of the authors do display background anti-capitalism (for instance V P Kanitkar, who wrote the section on Hinduism, says, "... greed for money is a social evil which is spreading among the Hindu society. It is made worse by the increased advertising and availability of luxury consumer goods"), but a personal opinion stated as a personal opinion arouses my disagreement rather than my ire. The section on Christianity was written by Joe Jenkins. The factual stuff is competently done. As for opinion, I nodded at "The State in its oppression of the people makes use again and again of the name of God," although Mr Jenkins and I probably had different States and different oppressions in mind. When I read "The self-interest and greed that seem to motivate a free capitalist market economy ... hardly fit in with the teachings of Jesus about selflessness and generosity", I growled, so the stratification and unequal power relationships that motivate an unfree non-capitalist non-market economy fit better, do they? But for the life of me I did not know what attitude to take to this line from a "box" about the German theologian, resistant and anti-Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Bonhoeffer helped form the 'Confessing Church' which opposed the Nazis. He also became involved in helping groups of Jews escape the death camps.Emphasis added. I think that's a howler. The Abwehr was German Military Intelligence. The funny thing is, though, that the description of the Abwehr as an organization that secretly worked to overthrow the Nazi state is nonetheless quite defensible. Still, the form of words used does seem a little compressed. Another thing that might be an authorial mistake or authorial secret irony is his choice of quotations to illustrate sexism in Christianity. After quotations which, fair to say, won't get St Paul and Martin Luther any prizes for embracing gender diversity in the workplace, the author supplied the following quote from Samuel Butler (the earlier one): "The souls of women are so small that some believe they have none at all." One of Butler's less amusing ditties, I'll admit, but I do think it ought to be pointed out that Butler was joking. Odd how simply putting the line breaks in makes it plain that it is meant to be funny: The souls of women are so small, / that some believe they have none at all; / Or if they have, like cripples, still / They've but one faculty, the will. UPDATE: this GCSE revision page is clearly based on the sexism double page spread from Moral Issues in Six Religions, and has the same quotes. Friday, December 03, 2004
More about guns, home invasion and the murder of John Monckton. John B of Shot by Both Sides writes: John Monckton's death is an unimaginably (for me at least; fortunately nobody close to me has ever been murdered) horrible event.The specific post in his blog is here. My first move has to be, obviously, an admission that he is absolutely right to say that my claim "this did not happen" is insupportable. It was hyperbole written in anger. My anger hasn't gone away. I'll be angry about this for years. But I am no longer overcome by anger. My reconsidered version of the statement is: this happened much less when Britons were free to own guns for self defence. And, more controversially, this would happen much less if Britons were again free to own guns for self defence. In my post I referred to home invasion. This is a type of robbery which requires that the householders be present in order that they may be intimidated into bypassing alarms, opening safes etc. It is not the same as burglars attempting to act by stealth and then being surprised by householders. I cannot discover which description fits the two cases cited by John B. Nonetheless the two crimes almost certainly were considered unusual since they ended in the perpetrators being hanged. (According to this, while the death penalty was in force, over the twentieth century the proportion of convicted murderers who actually suffered the death penalty varied between 1 in 8 and 1 in 23.) Nearly all types of crime have greatly increased over the twentieth century, armed crime particularly so (Number of armed robberies in London in 1904: four), and I certainly do partly attribute that to the gun laws. That said, I don't think the outlawing of guns is the prime cause. Off the top of my head, my opinion is that the causes of the increase in crime are, in order of importance: (1) Social mores/family/parenting breakdown due to welfare; (2) prohibition of drugs; (3) ease of escape due to availability of cars; (4) reduction of deterrent effect due to reduced chances of criminals being caught; (5) loss of the right to self-defence; (6) reduction of deterrent effect due to the end of the death penalty and the general relaxation of severity of laws - and, finally, floating in and around all these like a fog so that I can give it no ordinal number, moral relativism. There is plenty of scope for arguing about my suggested order - another time. For burglary and home invasion, (5) moves right up the rankings, probably to first place. According to Telegraph article by Joyce Lee Malcolm 13% of US burglaries take place when someone is at home. The equivalent figure for Britain is 53%. The Guardian gives a very similar figure of 51%, an increasing number of whom, it says, are "confronters". As even Dan Rather admits, burglary is more common in the UK than the US. If one house in ten had a gun, being a "confronter" would be much more dangerous. If the newspapers carried regular accounts of householders acquitted or even commended for killing or injuring them it would be much less desirable to commit that sort of crime. Reality is very different. In May the Telegraph carried this account of the Brett Osborn case. Osborn was watching television with friends when Wayne Halling, a complete stranger, barged into his home and started attacking one of the women there under the drug-fuelled delusion that she was his ex-girlfriend. Halling was high on cocaine, was covered in blood from having smashed windows along the street with his bare hands, and seemed impervious to pain when the other people in the house - including a pregnant woman - tried to force him off his victim. The only thing that stopped his rampage was when Osborn stabbed him, fatally, with a steak knife. For this Osborn was jailed for five years. John B would perhaps argue that Wayne Halling was what he calls a "desperate idiot". So he was, and I doubt that any deterrent would have had much effect upon him. But, returning to Mr Monckton's murderers, accounts strongly suggest they were robbers for gain. They chose this form of robbery because when the householders are in then all the alarms and locks in the world don't matter. I don't know if they specifically knew about the Brett Osborn case when beginning their journey up the Monckton's path but I am sure that they were aware of the stream of cases (of which Tony Martin's is the most famous) in which householders have been prosecuted for defending themselves. This "After dinner discussion" by Chris Lightfoot has informative graphs of murders in Britain during the twentieth century. It also is plain wrong when it says this: "In any case, handguns -- the most convenient for shooting people -- have only been controlled relatively recently, and the 160,000 handguns surrendered under the 1997 Firearms Act were enough to arm only about one in 250 of the adult population, even if they had been distributed uniformly (they weren't, since many gun enthusiasts preferred to to have several...)."Handguns have been controlled since 1903. Further Acts came in 1920, 1937, 1968 and 1997 - all of them followed by increases in gun crime. Eventually someone might start to wonder whether this strategy is working. One can argue whether the point at which right to self defence was lost came in 1946 (when the Home Office said that protection of self or property would no longer necessarily justify the issue of a FAC) or in 1969 (when it said that self defence definitely would not justify issue.) See this article by Richard Munday or the comments to the Samizdata post that started this for more. Whatever, there is no doubt that it was well and truly gone by the 70s. When I owned pistols in the early eighties they were required to be kept in a locked cabinet making them useless for self-defence. At any time over the last thirty years writing "self defence" in the place in an application for a firearms certificate where you give your reason for wanting a gun would have ensured you never got a certificate, ever. Finally, although I see no reason to doubt John B's sincere horror at the murder, I am bemused by his statement, hyperlinked to Perry's post, that it is "understandable to jump to conclusions about the appalling state of society, and use them to justify whatever your own personal cause may be." He makes it sound as if the link between the murder and Perry de Havilland's oft-stated belief that the state will neither protect you nor allow you to protect yourself is arbitrary and contrived. It is neither. Perry did not jump to conclusions when murder came practically to his very doorstep; his conclusions on that subject have been broadly the same in the several years I have known him write and talk about crime and self-defence. He didn't ask or want to have his point made in this ghastly way. But now that it has it would be absurd not to think that what he once knew from theory he now also knows from bitter personal experience. Tuesday, November 30, 2004
This did not happen when Britons were free to own guns for self defence. Perry de Havilland's neighbour was murdered yesterday, in a home invasion. The murdered man's wife was also stabbed by one of the burglars, and is in a serious condition. According to the Guardian's report the police were called by the couple's nine year-old daughter. Think about that nine year-old's experience. At 7pm she and her parents were in their own home, not indulging in any risky activity, not bothering anyone. An hour later she was calling the police to say her father was dead and her mother seriously injured. Presumably someone then contacted the family's older daughter, who had been out of the house, to give her the same news.
In a street I know quite well. While a friend of mine was having dinner some fifty yards away through a wall or two. It's getting closer. I do not like thee Dr Fell/ The reason why I cannot tell. First a quick update on the blogging front: I'm rather busy at the moment, so posting will still be sporadic for a while. Here's one post - a single sporad - to show that I'm still ticking over. Joanne Jacobs linked to an excellent article about the stultifying effect on children's development when they are physically over-protected.
Without having come to any firm conclusion I am thinking my way round whether the same calculation might apply to letting your children meet - briefly - risky people.
Does it help children develop skills of self-protection against bad characters to interact with bad characters in a limited way? If it does, is it worth the risk that interaction will become infection and/or the bad characters will be able to practise their badness on your precious kids?
Part of me says, no. One massive reason for all the bullying and unpleasantness that goes on in schools is that kids can't get away from baddies. Adult life is nicer because, in general, adults can get away. (Adult bullying, I believe, overwhelmingly takes place at the workplace. Presumably the victims dare not quit their jobs for financial reasons. This is indeed a bad situation to be in but not as bad as being obliged to stay within the bully's reach by law.)
Part of me says, yes. I'm not just thinking of school here. I'm thinking of the way children and teenagers used to roam more freely. In an average childhood this involved some dubious encounters. Like that creep I met in the Victoria & Albert Museum some time in the late seventies. But one did get a feel for bad vibes.
Political correctness denies bad vibes any validity, but I'm a believer in them. I haven't met many criminals. I haven't even met many bad people. But, looking back over my various encounters with folk who - while not necessarily bad - turned out to be trouble, seven times out of ten I had a non-psychic premonition that I really ought to sidle away.¹
Seven times out of ten isn't ten times out of ten, I grant you. Some people are megaton rather than kiloton trouble precisely because they conceal it so well. And some poor schmucks have no harm in them but lousy social skills.
It's also true that cultural differences can cause the bad vibe instinct to misfire. For example a man from Southern Europe can be perceived as sexually threatening by a woman from Northern Europe because he stands so close to her, when all he is really doing is standing at the distance normal to his culture.
But when all the caveats are caveatted I'm still left with the opinion that an instinct that says I do not like thee Dr Fell² is worth developing. I think the lack of it has some connection with the way that young people nowadays go from "muthn't cwoss the woad without holding mummy's hand" to "I'm an adult and I'll sleep with who I like" the day they turn sixteen.
And that means... I'm a little unhappy with where this line of argument is taking me.
¹ Premonitions that I usually ignored until the time came to curse the excessive politeness that had stopped me from running screaming to the hills the minute that Jonah came within a hundred feet of me. But that's a separate problem.
² Poor guy, huh? A distinguished career in education and this is how he goes down in history. Almost as bad as the fate of George Nathaniel Curzon. Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Every now and then a horrible curse descends on me. My appearance becomes wild and haggard. I wake and sleep at different times from usual. I lose my more elevated desires and become consumed by basic and primal motivations. While the fit is on me I find my temperament becomes strangely solitary and even aggressive. I emit savage, animal-like snarls whenever friends and family try to communicate with me. To those who seek to know why I am afflicted by this strange periodic transformation I can give only one answer... sometimes people pay me money to work for them.
Low blogging this week. Friday, November 19, 2004
Glenn Hoddle does not deserve to be lumped in with Aragonés. For the most part Simon Barnes in the Times writes well and fairly about the controversy over racist remarks by Luis Aragonés, head coach for the Spanish football team. Or rather the controversy in Britain and lack of controversy in Spain. But there was one part of his article that I thought was unfair. I quote: Glenn Hoddle was dismissed as England coach because he said things about the disabled that provoked a heart-felt reaction across the country. The head of the England football team just can’t go around saying things like that.No, he can't. And that has the unfortunate consequence, particularly for those who oppose racism as Simon Barnes does, that until things change we can never have a Hindu coach for our football team. Hoddle's belief in reincarnation and that misfortune in this life is the result of bad behaviour in past lives may be unusual for a white Briton but is orthodox for thousands of Britons of the Hindu religion. I have no doubt that Hoddle's sacking had a chilling effect on Hindus striving for public eminence in all sorts of fields, not limited to sport. Perhaps the greatest, the most heartfelt, of all questions is: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Closely related to it is another question: "How can a good God allow such suffering?"
"There is no God," say the atheists, "and hence no reason why." For those who still hope, there have been two great religious answers; the Free Will of the Judeo-Christian religions (combined with the belief in a future state where "every tear shall be wiped away"), and the Law of Karma proposed by the Buddhists, Jains and Hindus.
It is not my answer. I do not believe in reincarnation. But it is a seriously considered answer with millennia of intellectual tradition behind it. This article by a Canadian Hindu defends the religion against the charge that it is anti-disabled. The person with the disability is indeed entitled to ask the perennial question, "Why me?" And, for him or her, karma and reincarnation provides an answer: it is a result of your own past deeds. This serves two ends. First, it keeps the one disabled from concluding that we live in a Godless, capricious universe and are victims of a purposeless fate. Second, one can now look to the future, for the doctrine of karma does not end with the proposition that what happens to us is the result of what we have done. It equally advances the proposition that we create our future by how we act now. So, do not wallow in self-pity but strive for a better future, an endeavor in which all others should readily help.The article also stresses that it is the duty of others to help the sick and disabled in order to help their own karma. C.S. Lewis quoted a Hindu text that said, "Children, old men, the poor, and the sick, should be considered as the lords of the atmosphere." I wish more prominent British Hindus had spoken out about this at the time of Hoddle's exit - but I find it hard to blame them for their silence, given that it had just been demonstrated that people with their beliefs could be sacked for them to popular acclaim.
Kings and dictators can get satisfaction. Scott Campbell, the Bunny, sent me this even more surprising story about Kim Jong Il from Der Spiegel. I have to say that the story included some tabloidish elements - the 2,000-strong "satisfaction team", for instance - that made me wonder whether I should take it with a pinch of salt. Come to think of it, though, just what is it I find so unlikely? Although sources differ as to whether Khosrow Anüshirvan, the 'Immortal Soul' of Zoroastrian Persia, had a harem of 3,000 (as stated by this Islamic website) or a mere 1,200 (as stated in this article from, bizarre as it may seem, a collection of puportedly humorous articles from Pravda) no one contests that he had a vast harem. Nor is it doubted by historians that Ibrahim the Mad had two hundred and eighty women of his seraglio sewn into sacks and cast into the Bosphorus. There is no oddity or cruelty that has not at some time been practised by those of great power. If he wants to, Kim Jong Il can have a harem greater than that of the greatest of the Sassanids - so he probably does. Whether it will truly ensure his longevity in the manner hoped for is another matter. Thursday, November 18, 2004
The story is how predictably vicious, arbitrary and hated the rule of the Islamofascists was in Fallujah. That came from the Times, and I found it via Instapundit. The story around the story is that the Times Online has stopped charging overseas visitors, or so that Instapundit link tells me. (From here in the UK I see no difference.) Good news for bloggers. I wonder what led the Times to that decision. Scrolling up a little on Instapundit I found reports that the Dear Leader cult in North Korea may be going wobbly. Wobble on, freak. I found this story about it in the Washington Post. Unhappy the country where so much is deduced from the taking down of a few official pictures.
Seconded. Brian Micklethwait reviewed Sean Gabb's call for the abolition of state education before I got to it. Since he's already excerpted the serious bit, let me call your attention to an entertaining and quotable throwaway line: The politicians promise reform. But all reforms so far discussed can only make things worse. Labour promises more money and a restructuring of management - not only rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but also replacing the canvas with silk. Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Oh Sir Jeremy do not touch me! You can finish the song yourselves, right? Blithering Bunny has a funny post about the villanous Jeremy Clarkson, deflowerer of virgin... ditches? Unread me. A reader writes: Just a note relating to your post of the 15th and your throwaway remark about the "unread Italian of choice".Born a German, Amitai Etzioni took a Hebrew name - for reasons that will be obvious if you follow the link. Those unwordly artists, innocents abroad in this dog-eat-dog world of ours... Squander Two is sympathetic as ever. Incidentally, the mad things that have happened to the order and timestamps of my posts since I foolishly tried to split a post into two are an artist's cry of anger against the patriarchy. But you knew that. The riders of Rohan. Many of you will have seen a now-famous post in which Harry of Harry's Place expresses his astonishment that an article by Rohan Jayasekera suggesting that Theo Van Gough had it coming should appear in Index on Censorship of all places. Time was when the Index on Censorship, along with Amnesty International and the National Council of Civil Liberties, as the latter two were called before this fashion for one-word names, were the pillars of liberalism. The old gods fall. I would like to have directed you to read Mr Jayasekera's piece yourself to check out whether you think my description of it is accurate. However the link within Harry's post now takes you to a page of responses rather than the original article, and the search function of the Index website keeps timing out.
Mr Jayasekera is equivocally repentant. He admits that he had no basis for saying that the working relationship between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo Van Gogh was exploitative other than his own bubblethink inability to believe that an immigrant could possibly make an informed, independent decision to support Pim Fortuyn's party. I do though regret making presumptions about Ayann Hirsi Ali. It did seem like a faintly exploitative relationship to me. To me something seems not right about her association with a political party with policies that are so inimical to her fellow Somalis in the Netherlands, as well as to so many others. But in speaking for her for the purposes of my own argument, I think I was treating her no more fairly than van Gogh did.He might have added, but didn't, that his assumption that she was traumatised by her rejection of Islam was equally presumptuous. Judging from this interview she dropped it with little regret - what bothered her was not her apostasy but the danger it involves. Although I would rather the link still took you to the original article, the responses are worth reading in themselves. One of the commenters, Brian Murphy, said: Theo Van Gogh did not die of natural causes: he was murdered, but you know this, and yet you describe his brutal murder as 'a marvellous piece of theatre'. As the author of this marvellous theatre, the Islamofascists will no doubt wish to repeat their performance on other artists, whose views they dislike. It is dangerous to criticise Islamic extremism even for those at the centres of power. Even for Socialists. Mimount Bousakla, a female, socialist Belgian senator of Moroccan origin has gone into hiding. Already in hiding is a female Dutch politician of Somali Muslim origin who is now a critic of Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (Her first name is also sometimes spelt Ayan or Ayann.) She helped Theo Van Gogh make the film Submission. They got him, now they hope to get her too. Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Pang pang you're dead. I am having two pangs of conscience. Pang #1 is about yesterday's post. Do I actually know Hazel Blears has not read Ignazio Silone? I do not. Pang #2 had been forgotten but was revitalised by Boris Johnson's latest troubles. Last month I posted this and, in passing, linked to a tongue-in-cheek Boris fan site that featured a picture of him looking like a twit. But the fact is that if you photograph anyone enough some of the pictures will show him or her looking like a twit. Normal human speech involves silly face-shapes, normal human movement involves momentarily inelegant postures, and normal human life involves wearing scraggy sweatshirts sometimes. When a celeb goes out of favour with Wotcher magazine, photos of him or her looking pasty-faced and rat-haired while buying milk can always be found. Another point to bear in mind is that even if Boris Johnson looks like a twit for a higher percentage of the time than Pierce Brosnan, for instance, that is not his fault. Or even a fault. (Adultery, on the other hand, is both a fault and his.) It is a sign of the increasing childishness of the British public that it will only vote for a handsome, married parent as Prime Minister. I hope the tendency does not spread to mere ministers. Only a generation ago the fact that Edward Heath is a bachelor and no oil-painting did not stop him gaining the favour of a less superficial electorate. As things turned out, that was a pity. Heath became a bad, duplicitous prime minister and a positively vampiric ex-prime minister - but his appearance and childlessness had nothing to do with it. Monday, November 15, 2004
Third blah. There's an angry letter in the Guardian about policing in the Isle of Wight: So Hazel Blears wants to take policing to a "third phase" (Report, November 9). What exactly were phases one and two? We particularly liked the idea that local people should know local officers' names, "their emails, how to contact them". We don't have local police officers out here in the real world. Nearly all our local police stations have been taken away, as have the police officers who used to live in the community.Hazel Blears, in case you are wondering, is a Home Office minister. According to the Guardian report of November 9 referred to in the letter, she "is an unusual sort of politician. She talks, unabashedly, about promoting traditional working-class values such as decency and respect, quotes the Italian socialist Ignazio Silone, and says the future of politics is local." Exactly the usual sort of politican, then. The only deviation from cliché is going for Silone as Unread Italian of Choice when the Front Bench opt for Amitai Etzioni*. Ms Blears also says that the third phase of police reform is "about reinvention; about connecting public services to local people. We need to change the nature of the encounter and the relationship between the citizen and the local service".
Back to something that works?
The hope behind all this talk of phases is that reality will be too embarassed to diverge from the orderly and inevitable progression of the numerical series. Edward Heath, I recall, had an incomes policy that came in Phases I, II and III. It came unstuck at III.
This post is depressing me. Allow me to turn to a time-honoured means of cheering oneself up: the discovery and announcement of an entirely new law of nature. Are you ready? Here it is:Third Grandiose Whatevers are always unsatisfactory. The Third Whatever either is or wants to be the Second Whatever, but feels it necessary to pretend it isn't or doesn't. Third Way. Third World. Third Programme. See what I mean?
I am aware that the last paragraph has almost no connection to what went before other than mention of the word "Third". I just felt that humanity had already waited too long.
*A reader later pointed out to me that Etzioni is not in fact Italian.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
The fools have banned Vlaams Blok. Expect the successor party to sweep up votes in the next election. Laban Tall says all I wanted to. Good thing too as I'm not feeling up to blogging today. Several family members are not too well, either.
ADDED FRIDAY: More on the subject from Perry de Havilland of Samizdata. Oh this is so great. Just fan-bleeding-tastic. Exactly what we needed for Europe's future, isn't it? A million-strong bunch of ethnic nationalists who believe, accurately, that their reward for taking part in the peaceful political process is to have their party suppressed by the courts. Wednesday, November 10, 2004
The auld quarrel. John Quiggin of Crooked Timber writes about the Whole Language versus Phonics debate in the teaching of reading here. It's interesting to see that the comments include quite a few that defy stereotypes. For example this one by "another damned medievalist": Anyone who knows me knows I think of myself pretty solidly on the left. I’m for socialized medicine, don’t believe that tax cuts for the rich do society any good in a society where the rich think it’s just fine to for CEOs to make hundreds of times what the average worker makes, etc. Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Outside the pale of law. This article in the Scotsman: 'Police chiefs refuse to enforce smoking ban' contains the following quote:"Mr McConnell wants to see a complete ban, although there is likely to be a limited number of concessions for institutions such as prisons and nursing homes." It prompted my regular correspondent ARC to write: I found myself remembering Hannah Arendt's remark in 'The Origins of Totalitarianism': "The best criterion to decide whether someone has been forced outside the pale of law is to ask whether he would benefit by committing a crime. If a small burglary is likely to improve his legal position, at least temporarily, one may be sure he has been deprived of human rights."Hat tip to Freedom and Whisky. And another hat tip to the blog of the same name. Shy Labourites. Jim Mangles writes: You say, "The explanation (why opinion polls have underestimated Tory support for years) is that the media, talking heads, academics, comedians and the like, portray the Conservatives, or Republicans in the US, as the party of those who are unfeeling and/or uneducated."Could be, could be. We might have the novelty of an election in which neither main candidate is endorsed by the elite. However the obvious difference messing up the Bush-to-Blair (or John Howard-to-Blair) parallel is that however angry the talking heads are with Blair they still like him better than any Tory ever born. The prospect of Michael Howard as Prime Minister reminds me of how and when I first got to know his name. Michael Howard was Home Secretary in 1996 when Thomas Hamilton massacred sixteen primary schoolchildren and their teacher in Dunblane. He introduced stringent laws against handguns that stopped a little short of banning them all. For a while angry shooters filled the shooting press with proclamations of their intention to vote Labour. One or two supportive Labour MPs assisted them in their delusions and may even have shared them. Naturally, one of the first acts of the Labour government elected a few months later was to institute a complete ban.
The position of an anti-war left wing voter now is like the situation of a pro-gun voter then. However, as Mr Mangles points out, it's all a minority pursuit. Most voters don't care all that much about Iraq and of those who do care there may even be a significant bloc of voters who are more inclined to vote for Blair because of his stance on Iraq. Stranger things have happened. Friday, November 05, 2004
Unmissable offer! Free set of politicians and civil servants with every grotesquely expensive parliament building! Mindful of the Scottish experience, David Farrer of Freedom & Whisky is not surprised that the North East of England did not take up this offer. UPDATE: Sorry I got your name wrong, David. Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
There's just time for me to make my prediction. Bush. Not an easy victory, but by a margin good enough for government work. ADDED LATER: This article by Nick Cohen gives one reason for my prediction. It's actually advocating the replacement of Tony Blair with Gordon Brown, but my eye was caught by this paragraph: For reasons no one can adequately explain, the opinion polls have underestimated Tory support for years. Notoriously in 1992 they failed to predict Major's victory. What isn't as well known is that in 1997 the average opinion poll result for the Tories over the campaign was 3.5 per cent below their actual vote. In 2001 the polls underestimated their real support by 6.5 per cent.I can explain it. What's more I could explain it in 1992 before the election. Alas, I lacked the intiative to actually go into a betting shop. (To this day I never have entered one of these houses of sin.) The explanation is that the media, talking heads, academics, comedians and the like, portray the Conservatives, or Republicans in the US, as the party of those who are unfeeling and/or uneducated. That makes some Conservatives or Republicans a little more reluctant to tell pollsters how they plan to vote. A Dutch filmaker who made a film on violence against women in Islamic societies, and was working on one about Pim Fortuyn, has been assassinated. The Chigago Boyz have also been discussing that Lancet article: (Hat tip to James Rummel of Hell in a Handbasket.)
Shannon Love's posts and the comments to them engage with this post by Daniel of Crooked Timber and its comments. Later on Chris Bertram, also of Crooked Timber, posted this follow up about the morality of air strikes, also attended by comments from Shannon Love and others.
ANNOYED BY COMPUTER STUPIDITY UPDATE: I tried to sumbit a comment to Ginny's Chicago Boyz post but it was rejected by the system due to "questionable content." I am mystified. Perhaps the program automatically rejects various WWII keywords as likely to degrade debate. Anyway, I'll assuage my frustration by posting my comment here: An anonymous commenter says (in reply to John F): "the real issue is the capacity of modern warfare bombs, which is many, many, maby times the capacity of WWII bombs." |
