Natalie Solent |
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Politics, news, libertarianism, Science Fiction, religion, sewing.
You got a problem, bud? I like sewing.
E-mail: nataliesolent-at-aol-dot-com (I assume it's OK to quote senders by name.) Back to main blog RSS thingy 
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Links ( 'Nother Solent is this blog's good twin. Same words, searchable archives, RSS feed. Provided by a benefactor, to whom thanks. I also sometimes write for Samizdata and Biased BBC.) The Old Comrades:
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Friday, March 11, 2005
James Bartholemew says "It is revealed in several newspapers today that the London School of Economics has been operating a secret quota system to favour the admission of state-educated students. It has been doing this, no doubt, because of the pressure from the government."(Telegraph and Guardian accounts confirm what he said.) Secret quotas? In open, progressive, meritocratic Britain? I thought that sort of thing was what the Old Boy network in Britain used to do to keep out grammar school oiks, or the Ivy League in the US used to do to keep out Jews. In many ways the most interesting part of this story is that the quotas were secret. ("These notes are for guidance only and should not under any circumstances be discussed with any member of the public, including students, parents and schools.") When those who want to assign university places by class in the manner of Mao's China feel confident enough to be open about it, then we should fear. And the particular segment of "we" that should fear the most is those who are being educated, or whose children are being educated, in poorly performing state schools. Reform is a painful process at the best of times. Why reform when there is an actual incentive to have bad results? UPDATE: Since writing the part of the post above that implied the secrecy was reassuring, a counter-argument has belatedly occurred to me. The secret nature of the quotas allows the degree to which bad state schools are bad to be hidden for longer. "Teenagers who killed friend with scythes get life," says the Guardian in a headline about a horrifying recent case. Other outlets have used similar words. Friend? Find some other way to convey that this was not a case of murder by strangers. UPDATE: I'm not the only one to notice. I must have missed this when it came out, just as the case was going to trial. "You are surprised by..." ... the fact, discovered via Ace of Spades, that the Israeli Army discriminates against D & D players. Apparently the army shrinks think that D & D players should be given low security clearance as they are "detached from reality and susceptible to influence." Ace responds vigorously to this slur:
All the comments say the "detached from reality" video clip is hilarious. Pity I couldn't make it work. Thursday, March 10, 2005
Reality TV. The Times reports on the Iraqi TV show that consists of confessions from insurgents. I figure it must be effective: Insurgents have begun a propaganda counter-offensive, denouncing the tapes as fakes and threatening to impose “God’s justice” on the station’s employees — a threat apparently made real with the killing of Raeda Wazan, an anchor- woman, last month.Another journalist working for the station, Abdul Hussein al-Basri, was murdered in February, together with his young son. Some accounts put the child's age at three, others say he was six. Journalists are indeed being deliberately targeted in Iraq. Oddities of human behaviour. In Spain, one year after the Madrid bombs, there is a memorial to the slain that consists of metal keyboards on which you can type a message of commemoration or solidarity, linked to a scanned image of your hand. Between the two memory machines hang large white cylinders on which people can write whatever they like. "Never again", features several times. "Aznar, Bush and Blair are the assassins."Actually it was some other people. Sunday, March 06, 2005
My kids could use the TV remote at two and a half. Did I sit next to them while they watched of a morning, explaining all the disturbing bits in Thomas The Tank Engine? Nah. This is real life. I had romper suits to wash, sheets to change and all the other exciting details of housewifery. I popped in and out, as you do. Let'em choose themselves between Bear in the Big Blue House and Thomas. There's even more choice nowadays. Tweenies, Razzledazzle, or a man sticking a needle into his groin. Saturday, March 05, 2005
"Pass the exam and you are free to go," says the Adam Smith blog to fourteen year olds. Theoretical fourteen year olds of a theoretical future when we have stopped imprisoning people until they are eighteen. Typical ASI proposal. I object on principle: 14 year olds should be free to go without passing any test. But politically, this might be a winner. Like council house sales or a flat tax it's the sort of thing that can weasel its way through cracks in the the statist walls. Bizarro mondo: Year Ten classes where the un-academic pupils said to the ones who were headed to university, "Stop mucking about, willya? Can't you see I'm trying to work?" Imagine. Friday, March 04, 2005
On a much more serious note Photon Courier also links to an essay by Lee Harris about the 'peculiar institution' of Palestinian terrorism. Harris is a lot softer on the Stern Gang and the Algerian terrorists than I would be, but it's a valuable essay. Southern slaverowners and Palestinian terrorists both wowed the foreign girls with their brooding, tragic, sexy, dangerous, gun-totin' ways. Lapine Wisdom Part I. I found A Constrained Vision via Photon Courier (and via the fact the blog title is a Thomas Sowell quote). It's full of erudite posts. But I am going to link to the really important one about making sure the first words you say every month are "rabbit rabbit." That makes at least three people over two continents who know the secret. We used to say it at school in South London. Used to. I hadn't thought of it for decades. Now I know why I'm not rich. However, please be warned that "tibbar tibbar" last thing in the month is rank superstition. Thursday, March 03, 2005
Laban Tall has once more collected together several accounts of postal vote fraud. (The drawing together of stories from different newspapers to demonstrate that individual instances are part of a trend is a valuable public service that blogs are well placed to perform. Jim Miller has been doing something on the same lines in the US.) Ironic, isn't it? Histories of the Labour movement used to proudly refer back to the Chartists and their struggle for the secret ballot. Now the Labour party are returning us to the days of the master of the house decreeing the way his household will vote. A Labour government now thinks it is too late to protect the general election from voting fraud. Too late? How can it be "too late" for a government to protect the integrity of the process to which they owe their legitimacy? If a man is convicted by a jury that is latter found to have been bribed or intimidated do we say, oh, too late now, he's already in prison? The European Commission, anxious to lead the field in every category of human excellence, has defined Chutzpah. Squander Two is having hosting problems. Normally resident here, he is temporarily to be found at http://squandertwo.blogspot.com. Oh, and he's looking for cheap web hosts whose parents were legally married. Wednesday, March 02, 2005
The law on "charity" collections - and on non charity-collections. Stewart writes: Many years in Local Authority "Enforcement" have led me to the conclusion that people just make assumptions about what the legislation they enforce actually says.Good question. In fact, if ever this provision should become widely known, it might become commonplace for organisations that were actually charities to pretend to be profit-making. If they could get over the anti-profit prejudice, that is. I do not want to give the impression that I am a believer in "charity bad, profit good." I believe it is blessed to give - but that does not make it cursed to make a profit. Nor does it mean that the giver should turn off his or her brain: there are situations where a profit relationship has greater long term stability and equality of status than a charity relationship. (Few people would want to go to work every day just for love of their employers, for instance.) It's beyond my knowlege to say whether getting old clothes to the Third World for re-use is one of those situations, but then again I don't have to know. Let those who wish try both approaches. The advantages of a charity over a commercial organisation for sheer, concentrated doing-of-good are well known. But sometimes it might go the other way. It could be that for-profit clothes re-sellers might concentrate more on what their customers want rather than what is deemed to be good for them by people far away. They also might disrupt local clothes merchants less. Stewart makes another good point about how many who enforce the law have a cavalier attitude to what the law actually says. Often they seek to enforce a climate of opinion. Would you dare go back to the place where a suicide bomber killed a hundred-plus people the other day and demonstrate against terrorism? They would. (Via Instapundit.) Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Technology, the avenger. Here is a thorough rundown on developments in the Ward Churchill affair from David Kopel. The plagiarism and falsification of sources will get him in the end. The web has made academic crimes much less safe. And it's done so retrospectively. Many a professor who had almost forgotten the part a little manipulation of citations had played in his early career must now wake up with a slight nagging fear every morning. It's almost as bad for them as it is for the murderers. Profits warning. The other day we had a flyer from an outfit called "Lunetex" through the door asking us to leave out bags of old clothes which they would then pass on to the Third World. Near the bottom of the flyer in not particularly small print it said that - Oh, it's too awful, too shameful. I can hardly bear to say it. It said that Lunetex was a profit making company rather than a charity. Thank heavens that there are still decent people around who hold fast to the knowledge that the only permitted relationship between Britain and the Third World is that of donor and mendicant. People like the South Cambridgeshire District Council who advise us thus: WARNING - FOR INFORMATIONHere's another one, from the ever-vigilant guardians of the village of Milton who say: A company called Lunetex has been putting leaflets through doors around the village collecting clothes etc for "the third world". If you have missed this last time SCDC have put out warnings about this sort of thing. We've seen Olonex come and go, and Merico, and Realmday. Now they seem to be born again (again) as Lunetex.Actually, following the links, it seems both warnings come ultimately from the same official, Juli Stallabrass. Now, in case you are wondering, I am not on the board of Lunetex, Olonex, Merico or Realmday. Never heard of any of 'em before I got the flyer. For all I know they are wicked, wicked people. The repeated changes of name do sound a bit dodgy. There is a hint that they were not always as upfront about their profit-making nature as they are now. However, given that the leaflet I saw was perfectly frank on that issue, I am a little at a loss to see what exactly is supposed to be so bad about what they are doing. South Cambridgeshire District Council itself runs recycling centres. People are urged to pass their old cardboard and bottles on to the council who will, er, sell them to recycling companies. I thought for a moment that that was the distinction: getting a virtuous glow from giving stuff you don't need away to bodies who will then sell it for profit is OK so long as the body concerned is South Cambridgeshire District Council. I suppose the argument would be that it keeps down the Community Charge - only that can't be it, because the same council also advises businesses on how best to donate stuff directly to recycling companies. Really, all I'm left with as an explanation for why Lunetex should arouse such ire is that they make it slightly less likely that people will give old clothes to charities (so do eBay, car boot sales, and the small ads column of any local paper) or that they dare to make a profit out of semi-charitable recycling without the blessing of a priestly caste - i.e. without a licence from the Licensing Department. Sunday, February 27, 2005
Friday, February 25, 2005
Nigeria's tragedy. Many observers in Nigeria believe that the roots of the violence across much of the country are not religious or cultural.So writes the BBC's Dan Isaacs in this article. The bold type was added by me. I wonder whether Mr Isaacs is aware that what he is saying is an argument for free markets and against a large public sector. I really can't tell. Imagine a different Nigeria in a happier timeline. One where oil wealth never went to the federal government in Abuja in the first place, and hence where capturing power there was not the ticket to riches. Imagine a Nigeria that had been like that since Independence... "Caught off guard by reporters at the 2005 Kano Computer Entertainment Show, where he had addressed the All-Nigeria Software Developers' Association, President Obasanjo admitted that he had considered offering his resignation after the shock revelation that an official in the Finance Ministry had taken a bribe. "Nigeria's reputation for probity is one of our biggest assets," he said. In a country where the government is in bed with everybody, once the government is infected soon everybody else will be too. An email about Holocaust Memorial Day. Trailing through some of the email I missed earlier in the month I found this: as-salaamu 'alaykum everyone,"Unspun" is a mailing list connected with the Muslim Council of Britain. NB: So far as I know it is not connected with the all-but-openly pro-terrorist Jihad Unspun. These people are the moderates. Wednesday, February 23, 2005
"Your skullcap is slipping." Here is a fascinating article by Johann Hari on his own experience of anti-semitism. (He isn't a Jew - but some think he is.) There is much to disagree with in the article and the comments, but read it anyway. Not widely known. Did you know that the Spanish Prime Minister says that if the EU constitution is passed all the British embassies worldwide will be closed, along with those of other nations? He also says that Britain and France will lose their Security Council seats. I didn't know either. I got it from the EU Serf who got it from The Adventuress. Also scroll up to check out EU Serf's post about EU threats to commercial software. Wherever you go, there they are. Blithering Bunny is worried that Iain Duncan Smith's confidence in blogging may be misplaced. So if we couldn't see how bad heavy-duty socialism was when it was staring us in the face - if it took the ruin of several countries before we acknowledged it - what chance do we have against the more subtle applications of socialism that are going on now?Dead right about the way that the National Curriculum was taken over by the very trendy-teacher establishment it was designed to curb. That is the Murphy's Law of centralised official bodies. Or centralised bodies of any sort, really.* One of my big fears about ID cards is that any mechanism intended as a security lock can, once it is taken over, become the skeleton key. This "taking over" is most usually pictured as being technical, and of course it could be. But it could also be institutional. That's how military coups work. Any time someone starts talking about an official initiative to help and reward bloggers, run for the hills and blog from there. *Let's all evolve into dispersed vapour-cloud creatures. Really, it's the only safe way. The Home Secretary has backed off a bit. Good. But not good enough. The prosecution of the War on Terror frequently reminds me of the behaviour of school authorities regarding parents who take their children out of school during term - or of the way the police go for women eating apples in the car rather than burglars. The authorities make a big parade of cracking down in one way so that they can avoid cracking down in another way that is more painful but also more useful. Tuesday, February 22, 2005
So it seems to be spies' day. Let's draw the threads together. There were some notable injustices carried out at the behest of MI5 during World War II, one of them detailed in today's first post - but heaven knows the threat was real. The Campaign for Nuclear disarmament are angry at the way they were spied upon - staying silent about the fact that there were real enemy spies among them, as alluded to in the last post - and yet CND might justifiably retort that the case officers who cut their teeth bugging them are now gnawing away at everyone's civil liberties. The vast majority of CND members were perfectly law-abiding and patriotic. Me, for instance. The trouble with talking about spies is that there's always a "but". Which brings me to an email written by my regular contributor A Regular Contributor, or ARC as he is familiarly known. He writes: saw your B-BBC post on McCarthy, which gave me a number of thoughts. As you say, there are two messages any discussion should convey.ARC then apologises for the fact that, being separated from his sourcebooks on all this at the present, he is vague on precise dates and names. Hence also all these "IIRC"s. He continues:
OK, Teach, we get the message. [ADDED AFTER WRITING THIS POST: Curses! The mighty Ablutionist got in before me. Read his post here.] This Education Guardian lesson plan about nuclear proliferation by Lyndsey Turner has no less than four separate links to CND as a source of facts and timelines for the students to work from. There is also one link to www.tridentploughshares.org/. You can safely assume that every member of this organisation is also a member of CND. Ditto for the Come Clean WMD Awareness Programme. There are more links. There's one to Nuclear Berkeley, Nuclear World, one to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and one to a CNN history of the cold war dating from 1999. Lyndsey Turner also points the student to numerous Guardian articles, although it might have avoided giving the impression that the way to get published in the Guardian is to keep mentioning the wonderfulness of the Guardian had she also mentioned the excellent material available in rival newspapers. Are they all like that? No, not quite. www.nuclearterror.org/ and www.armscontrol.org/ seem moderate, non-partisan organisations with information-heavy websites. The Nuclear Terror website particularly advocates that the priority of the US government should be control of fissile material ahead of the war against terrorism, and this media advisory from the Arms Control Organisation "Applauds Lawmakers' Move to Cut Funding for Costly and Counterproductive Nuclear Weapons Projects". These two are bodies within the establishment, then, but not, shall we say, quite in sympathy with the current US administration. Finally the US Department of Energy sneaks in somewhere to provide a timeline: this is as close as Turner's lesson plan lets us get to hearing from those who disagree with the CND view, though judging from the column space and indignation the timeline authors give to Watergate they are certainly not Republican patsies. A child following this lesson plan could certainly learn quite a lot from following the suggested links, including the links to the CND website. (They won't learn about Vic Allen, though. Forgive me, I digress.) But what is missing? Any attempt at letting the other side speak in their own words, that's what. The funny thing is that Lyndsey Turner probably sees nothing odd about this at all. Paid by MI5 for each person he entrapped. A letter in today's Telegraph gets to the... Heart of the matter This five year old Guardian article says that Public Record Office files relating to Ben Greene's internment have been closed under Section 3(4) of the Public Order Act 1958. The author, former MI5 agent David Shayler, was himself imprisoned for six months for disclosing secret information to a newspaper. (It was accepted that he did not act for money.) Although Shayler should never have been imprisoned I remember thinking at the time I was not convinced by all his allegations. But I see no reason to doubt his basic sincerity, nor the purely factual statement about Greene. It is typical that my quick Google follow-up on the story of Ben Greene also led to an account of the abuse of power. That is the end result of rule by discretion of the Home Secretary. "Yes, Miranda, this is the most disturbing carrot I've seen in quite awhile." Rob Hinkley directed me to the museum of food anomalies. Monday, February 21, 2005
Two things we did know last week. (1) postal voting makes fraud easy and (2) an eavesdropper sees the same G W Bush as the rest of us do. Although the White House condemned Mr Wead for publicising the tapes, they reveal a private Mr Bush almost identical to his public persona: tough, confident, conservative, with a genuine belief in God, a distrust of the United Nations and a loathing of the press.Happy the man. Habemus internetiam. On second thoughts, my husband thinks that may be "habemus interrete." Or on third thoughts "interreticulum." Habemus somethingam, anyway. Wednesday, February 16, 2005
The old computer is bust. The new computer, the new computer purchased yesterday, the new computer that was the repository of my hopes, vehicle of my dreams... the new computer won't connect to the internet. But the steamed milk flavoured with coconut-syrup at this internet cafe is nice. I may not be online but at least I am cool. |