Quotulatiousness

November 26, 2011

Daniel Hannan on how the “Occupy” movement misunderstands the right

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:57

In his latest column in the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan lists ten mistaken beliefs that the “Occupy” folks seem to have about conservatives:

1. Free-marketeers resent the bank bailouts. This might seem obvious: we are, after all, opposed to state subsidies and nationalisations. Yet it often surprises commentators, who mistake our support for open competition and free trade for a belief in plutocracy. There is a world of difference between being pro-market and being pro-business. Sometimes, the two positions happen to coincide; often they don’t.

2. What has happened since 2008 is not capitalism. In a capitalist system, bad banks would have been allowed to fail, their profitable operations bought by more efficient competitors. Shareholders, bondholders and some depositors would have lost money, but taxpayers would not have contributed a penny.

[. . .]

6. Nor, by the way, does state intervention seem to be an effective way to promote equality. On the most elemental indicators — height, calorie intake, infant mortality, literacy, longevity — Britain has been becoming a steadily more equal society since the calamity of 1066. It’s true that, around half a century ago, this approximation halted and, on some measures, went into reverse. There are competing theories as to why, but one thing is undeniable: the recent widening of the wealth gap has taken place at a time when the state controls a far greater share of national wealth than ever before.

7. Let’s tackle the idea that being on the Left means being on the side of ordinary people, while being on the Right means defending privileged elites. It’s hard to think of a single tax, or a single regulation, that doesn’t end up privileging some vested interest at the expense of the general population. The reason governments keep growing is because of what economists call ‘dispersed costs and concentrated gains’: people are generally more aware the benefits they receive than of the taxes they pay.

November 25, 2011

GCHQ goes public, sort of

Filed under: Britain, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:57

GCHQ grew out of the WW2 code-breaking group based at Bletchly Park and is the British equivalent of the NSA. Recently it was announced that GCHQ will start offering its expertise to private businesses:

Some of the secret technologies created at the government’s giant eavesdropping centre GCHQ are to be offered to private industry as part of new cyber security strategy being unveiled by ministers on Friday.

The idea is likely to be one of the most contentious in the plans, which could lead to the government being paid substantial sums for software developed by the intelligence agency based in Cheltenham.

Opening up GCHQ to commercial opportunities will not deflect it from defending national security, which remains its priority, ministers argue, and the agency has insisted it will not be side-tracked.

However, the new cyber strategy makes clear that the dangers posed by espionage and crime on the web cannot be faced without better co-operation between the two sectors, and that they will have to work together more closely in future.

November 23, 2011

Sing a song, go to jail

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Soccer — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

This is rather disturbing:

Imagine the scene. A dawn raid. A vanload of police officers batter down a front door. A 17-year-old boy is dragged from his home and driven away. He is charged with a crime and appears in court. His lawyers apply for bail, but the court decides his crime is too serious for that. So he is taken to a prison cell and remanded in custody.

What was his crime? Terrorism? Rape? No, this 17-year-old was imprisoned for singing a song. Where did this take place? Iran? China? Saudi Arabia? No — it was in Glasgow, Scotland, where the 17-year-old had sung songs that are now deemed by the authorities to be criminal. The youth was charged with carrying out a ‘religiously aggravated’ breach of the peace and evading arrest.

Why haven’t you heard about this case? Why aren’t civil liberties groups tweeting like mad about this affront to freedom? Because the young man in question is a football fan. Even worse, he’s a fan of one of the ‘Old Firm’ teams (Celtic and Rangers), which are renowned for their historic rivalry, and the songs he sang were football ditties that aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Draconian new laws are being pushed through the Scottish parliament to imprison fans for up to five years for singing sectarian or offensive songs at football games, or for posting offensive comments on the internet, and this 17-year-old fell foul of these proposed laws.

November 22, 2011

Another case where “spending cuts” still mean increased spending

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:40

No, not the US government, even though the media will be talking up the “savage” spending cuts coming because of sequestration (which will only reduce the rate of increase, not actually reduce spending). In this case it’s Britain:

Why is Britain growing more slowly than other developed nations? Why have we been outperformed over the past 12 months by every EU state except Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Romania?

Let’s start by dismissing the Labour-Guardian-BBC explanation: the idea that the economy is shrinking because of ‘the cuts’. As this blog never tires of pointing out, net government expenditure is higher now than it was under Gordon Brown. We are set to borrow at least £122 billion this year. Spending is above 50 per cent of GDP. How much more ‘stimulus’ do critics want?

What the international league tables show is that the countries which decreed the biggest bailouts experienced the sharpest contractions. Far from ‘stimulating’ the economy, these various programmes have taken money out of the productive sector. If stimulus spending worked, the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War.

November 21, 2011

Oh, good: the age of hagiographic Beatles stories may be coming to a close

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 17:02

Or, if not a close, at least a pause:

Given the vastness and variety of the literature, it would be incorrect to say that the Beatles story has been whitewashed, not when it includes so many get-even tell-alls and book-sized sumps of sensational gossip. But there is a quasi-official version of events, and when it is reissued periodically from the tireless Beatles public relations machine, the narrative does tend to take on the unblemished pallor of approved history. For 50 years the Beatles have been the rock group you could take home to meet Mom, and nobody close to their stupendous commercial enterprise seems eager to undo the image.

Paul, Ringo, the two widows, and what remains of the original Liverpool crowd keep the history tidy for reasons that are surely as much personal as fiduciary. Beatles Anthology, the eight-hour, supposedly definitive documentary the Beatles machine released in 1995, omitted any unpleasantness that might cast a shadow on the sunny version of the Beatles story, aside from a few inescapable anecdotes about illegal drug-taking. There was no mention of the now-legendary sybaritic excesses of Beatles tours, or the friends, wives, lovers, children, and employees betrayed or discarded on the way to the top. The sulfurous rancor that at last pulled the group apart, and which continued in punishing and pointless legal maneuvers for another generation, was mostly ignored. Even today, Paul and Ringo have stalled the rerelease of the 1970 documentary Let It Be owing to its glaring display of the group’s lassitude, self-loathing, and crisscrossing bitterness. And they’re right to keep it locked away, if the point is preserving the image of the moptops. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Let It Be, but I don’t recall wanting to take any of those Beatles home to meet Mom.

The authorized version has been buffed in recent weeks with commemorations of the tenth anniversary of George Harrison’s death, at age 58, from cancer. There he was again, peering out from the cover of Rolling Stone, just like old times. Life magazine, always a codependent in Beatles mythmaking, disinterred itself long enough to get out a special celebratory issue. HBO aired a four-hour documentary put together by Martin Scorsese, Living in the Material World, which is also the title of a companion book of quotes and pictures released by Harrison’s widow Olivia.

The book is the size of a paving stone and as sumptuously produced as any coffee-table accessory can be. Scorsese’s movie, on the other hand, is a mess. Like too many documentaries nowadays, it lacks a single narrator, leaving the viewer helpless as the movie jumps back and forth through each stage of the Beatles story, from blitzed-out Liverpool to blissed-out Rishikesh. Anyone unfamiliar with the small but necessary roles in the dramatis personae will find himself wondering who all these people are. Where’d this Astrid woman come from, and how come Stuart Sutcliffe is dead all of a sudden — and now that you mention it, who was Stuart Sutcliffe anyway? Poor Pete Best, who he? (The answers for the uninitiated: Hamburg, Germany, where she befriended the young Beatles; a brain tumor; the Beatles’ first bass player; and .  .  . it’s complicated.)

Unlike most of the folks around my age, there’s almost no Beatles music in my collection (at least, by the Beatles: I’ve got Stanley Jordan’s wonderful version of Eleanor Rigby, and one or two other covers). While I wouldn’t go as far as Kathy Shaidle (“Beatles were phonier than Partridge Family, Monkees put together”), I would say that I’ve generally considered the Beatles to be over-rated.

November 20, 2011

Circular reasoning in traffic control

Filed under: Britain, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:26

If you’ve ever been driving in Britain, you’ll have encountered the ubiquitous roundabout. The arguments for adopting them in North America are pretty strong:

The modern, safe roundabout first entered service in Britain back in 1966, after it adopted a rule that at all circular intersections traffic entering had to give way, or “yield”, to circulating traffic. This innovation, along with the sloping curves of the entry and exit of a roundabout (which slow traffic down), created a design that is now found worldwide. Though tens of thousands of roundabouts exist across Europe, America still has only 3,000 of them.

One of their main attractions, says Mayor Brainard, is safety. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an independent research group, estimates that converting intersections with traffic lights to roundabouts reduces all crashes by 37% and crashes that involve an injury by 75%. At traffic lights the most common accidents are faster, right-angled collisions. These crashes are eliminated with roundabouts because vehicles travel more slowly and in the same direction. The most common accident is a sideswipe, generally no more than a cosmetic annoyance.

What locals like, though, is that it is on average far quicker to traverse a series of roundabouts than a similar number of stop lights. Indeed, one national study of ten intersections that could have been turned into roundabouts found that vehicle delays would have been reduced by 62-74% (nationally saving 325,000 hours of motorists’ time annually). Moreover, because fewer vehicles had to wait for traffic lights, 235,000 gallons of fuel could have been saved.

Once you get used to using them, you realize just how much of your urban and suburban driving time is spent waiting for the damned traffic light to change (especially if you live in an area with non-permissive left turn lights). The benefits don’t scale well, however: at least in my experience, multiple multi-lane roads entering roundabouts are actually less efficient than traffic lights would be.

November 18, 2011

A topic that sends the Guardian off into deep social conservative waters

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:35

Of the various British papers I link to on a regular basis, the Guardian is the most liberal. It can generally be depended upon to come down on the liberal side of any question except for one:

… on the broad subject area of sex and sexuality, the Guardian, more often than not, comes down on the side of repression. The paper comes very much from the liberal, middle-class, English tradition, and the one subject the English middle-classes have always had trouble dealing with is sex. The Guardian also tends to take anti-sex campaigners more seriously if they adopt the “feminist” label than if they crusade under a more old-fashioned “morality” banner. On this subject, the Guardian’s coverage can swing from liberal to deeply conservative in the blink of an eye.

I blogged recently about the UK Government’s steps towards Internet censorship, using the excuse of “protecting children from pornography”. The Guardian, normally a warrior against censorship, lost its mind in an editorial on the subject, using Daily Mail-type phrasing such as “…bombarding of people’s homes and children by pornography…” and “…the destructive effects of pornography on relationships and values…“. The editorial also mentioned a recent government-commissioned report on “sexualisation”, neglecting to mention that it came from a Christian lobbying organisation. The idea that anyone who doesn’t want to see porn is “bombarded” with it is of course laughable, and serious research on porn has yet to reveal the harmful side effects claimed by conservatives of various shades.

And this wasn’t a one-off: on the icky subject of sex, the Guardian is often deeply conservative. I recently interviewed strippers who are defending themselves against campaigners who threaten their right to work in the London boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets (podcast coming soon). These women are articulate, well-paid and belong to trade unions. Yet, the Guardian is apparently convinced that stripping is bad, and refuses to take seriously the voices of the women themselves who earn a living that way; instead, they give a platform to “feminist” (aka sexual morality) groups who use fascist-style propaganda methods (such as claiming a non-existent link between strip venues and rape) to attack the venues and the people who work in them. While women who strip have offered to write for the Guardian about their experiences, only one ex-dancer, Homa Khaleeli is published, because she tells “the truth about lap dancing” — in other words, she makes the “exploitation” and “objectification” noises that Guardianistas want to hear.

The Guardian has a confused idea of defending sexual freedom. While Gay, Lesbian, Transgender issues are treated with the appropriate straight-faced correctness, other forms of sexuality and sexual freedom have Guardian journos giggling like school children. Fetishes, swinging, polyamory, BDSM, open lifestyles, bisexuality and sex work… these aren’t causes for free speech but excuses for the Guardian to pander to middle-England prejudices (and have a good, Carry On giggle in the process).

November 17, 2011

Updating 1984 to 2011: tweetcrime replaces thoughtcrime

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:12

Patrick Hayes in the Independent:

Who’s afraid of the English Defence League (EDL) clicktivists? Well the police for a start, who decided to undertake a mass pre-emptive arrest of 179 EDL supporters, while they were drinking in a Westminster pub on Armistice Day, for supposedly planning an ‘attack’ on Occupy London protesters at St Paul’s. The police were tipped off by bloggers who had scoured the EDL’s Facebook posts for threatening remarks, and were apparently also assisted in the arrests by some Occupy London supporters, with the administrator of an Occupy London Facebook page boasting he played a role.

These arrests have rightly chilled civil liberties activists. As human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell tweeted at the time: ‘Democracies don’t arrest people who have committed no crime. EDL today, who next? Civil liberties are for all, even odious EDL.’ Brendan O’Neill has argued on spiked, ‘it seems pretty clear that [EDL] supporters were arrested for committing a tweetcrime, the modern-day equivalent of Orwell’s thoughtcrime, where you’re nicked for what lurks inside your head rather than for anything you’ve done in the real world.’

Strikingly, this illiberal, anti-democratic crackdown on EDL protesters came less than a fortnight after the publication of the most extensive research into the EDL yet: one that reveals the EDL to largely be all tweets and no action.

November 15, 2011

Idiotic British defence decision is USMC’s gain

Filed under: Britain, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:44

Lewis Page explains why the USMC is getting a lovely windfall from Britain’s crack-brained decision to get out of the aircraft carrier business:

Blighty’s famous force of Harrier jump-jets, controversially disposed of during last year’s defence review along with the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers, have been reprieved: the radical vectored-thrust jets, believed by many to have been the best strike planes in Britain’s arsenal, will fly (and almost certainly, fight) again.

However they won’t do so with British roundels on their sides or British pilots in their cockpits. The mothballed fleet of 74 Harriers, plus the UK’s inventory of spare parts, is being bought up lock, stock and barrel by the US Marines.

The US Marines possess a substantial air arm of their own and operate a large fleet of Harriers, with slightly different equipment but structurally the same. They anticipate that the British planes, engines and spares, many of which are in nearly-new condition and have been recently upgraded at significant expense, will allow them to keep flying Harriers into the mid-2020s without difficulty.

“We’re taking advantage of all the money the Brits have spent on them. It’s like we’re buying a car with maybe 15,000 miles on it,” Harrier expert Lon Nordeen tells the Navy Times.

November 14, 2011

Retired Gurkha soldiers changing the face of security services in Britain

Filed under: Asia, Britain, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:14

An interesting article at the BBC website details how many retired Gurkha soldiers have found civilian careers in security a good follow-up to their military service:

It has been suggested that some Gurkhas are struggling to cope with the cost of living in the UK, with the British Gurkha Welfare Society saying about 25,000 of those who retired before 1997 still only receive a third of the pension of their British and Commonwealth former comrades.

But a recent study suggested that Gurkhas of working age are the most economically active and self-reliant social group in Britain.

The University of Kent research found the employment rates among Gurkha men and women are particularly high, at 95% for men under 60 and 93% for women under that age.

It also showed that security is the most popular job for male veterans. Ex-military people joining the security industry is nothing new, but security companies are capitalising on the Gurkhas’ formidable reputation.

G4S set up Gurkha Services in 2007 and it now employs at least 600 people across 27 contracts.

They are involved in guarding the UK’s “critical infrastructure”, such as power stations and railways, from vandals, protesters and thieves. Rarely a day goes by without some story about how cable theft has disrupted a train journey or caused a power outage. Now Gurkhas are the new front line against the crime wave.

“We feel completely and utterly betrayed”

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:37

More on the campaign to grant a specific medal to the veterans of the WW2 Arctic convoys:

They risked their lives again and again on what Churchill described as ‘the worst journey in the world’.

The heroes of the Arctic Convoys ran the gauntlet of German warplanes and U-boats to keep the Soviet Union supplied on the Eastern Front.

Even Russia has awarded commemorative medals to acknowledge its gratitude to the surviving sailors, more than 3,000 of whose comrades were killed.

Yet David Cameron has refused to do the same. Yesterday, as the nation paid tribute to its war dead on Remembrance Sunday, disgusted veterans expressed anger that the Prime Minister had seemingly reneged on a pledge to introduce a specific Arctic Medal.

‘We feel completely and utterly betrayed,’ said Commander Eddie Grenfell, 91, the leader of the Arctic Medal campaign. ‘How can Cameron stand up and support us in public but privately say we don’t deserve a medal? It’s two-faced and wrong.’

In opposition, the Tories pledged to introduce an Arctic Medal if they won power.

Footage from a Russian TV drama series “Konvoi PQ-17”.

November 12, 2011

Renewed call for Britain to issue a medal for WWII Arctic convoy veterans

Filed under: Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:36

A video report at the BBC website (no embedding allowed, unfortunately) looks at the campaign on the part of Arctic convoy veterans for a specific medal to recognize their amazing story.

There are calls for recognition for the sailors on the WWII Arctic Convoys who risked their lives to transport crucial supplies and munitions from Scotland to Russia.

Although the bravery of the crews is not disputed, the men who served on the ships have never been officially recognised with a British campaign medal.

The BBC’s Robert Hall reports.

Scottish Conservative Party goes non-conservative with new leader

Filed under: Britain, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:09

It sounds like the set-up to a joke, but it really is true: the new party leader is a lesbian kick-boxer:

The 32-year-old former BBC journalist edged out Murdo Fraser by only 566 votes in the bad-tempered contest after he argued the Tory brand was too mistrusted north of the Border for the party ever to succeed.

But Miss Davidson, who is openly gay and a kick boxer, said she will unite the deeply-divided party and attract new support from sections of Scottish society that have stopped listening to the Conservatives.

The result marks the culmination of a remarkably rapid political ascent. She joined the party two years ago and only won election as a Glasgow MSP in May after the Tories’ first-choice candidate was forced to stand down over his financial history.

She won the endorsement of only two other MSPs during the campaign, with the largest group backing Mr Fraser and his plan to replace the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party with a new organisation.

November 11, 2011

In memorium

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:00

A simple recognition of some of our family members who served in the First and Second World Wars:

The Great War

  • Private William Penman, Scots Guards, died 1915 at Le Touret, age 25
    (Elizabeth’s great uncle)
  • Private David Buller, Highland Light Infantry, died 1915 at Loos, age 35
    (Elizabeth’s great grandfather)
  • Private Walter Porteous, Northumberland Fusiliers, died 1917 at Passchendaele, age 18
    (my great uncle)
  • Corporal John Mulholland, Royal Tank Corps, died 1918 at Harbonnieres, age 24
    (Elizabeth’s great uncle)

The Second World War

  • Flying Officer Richard Porteous, RAF, survived the defeat in Malaya and lived through the war
    (my uncle)
  • Able Seaman John Penman, RN, served in the Defensively Equipped Merchant fleet on the Murmansk Run (and other convoy routes), lived through the war
    (Elizabeth’s father)
  • Private Archie Black (commissioned after the war and retired as a Major), Gordon Highlanders, captured at Singapore (aged 15) and survived a Japanese POW camp
    (Elizabeth’s uncle)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

November 10, 2011

Delingpole’s word of the day: monotesticularity

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:03

He’s talking about Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party:

‘Farage has only got one ball.’ The last time I made reference to the Ukip leader’s monotesticular status, I got a rocket from an outraged reader. But the reader had missed the point entirely. Nigel Farage’s handicap is a strength, not a weakness. He’s open about it, he’s unembarrassed by it and he’s a better man for it. Yes, Farage may have lost a bollock to cancer, but by God he’s got more cojones than almost any Conservative you could name.

Our Nigel is a Conservative himself, of course. Just one who has been temporarily dispossessed by the mainstream party. When you talk to Farage he’s perfectly upfront about what he considers to be Ukip’s role: to act as the Tory party’s conscience. The moment the Conservatives start behaving like proper Conservatives again — Eurosceptical, small government, low tax, etc — that’ll be it. Most of the 7 per cent of voters who are currently Ukip’s will be straight back into the Tory fold and we’ll have a proper, Thatcherite government again doing the Lord’s work.

Seven per cent! That figure — from the latest YouGov poll — is pretty amazing, isn’t it? It puts Ukip only one point away from the ailing Lib Dems, meaning it’s on track to become Britain’s third largest political party. Yet you’d scarcely be aware of this development, the way it has been ignored by most of our mainstream media.

Peter Oborne nailed it in a recent Telegraph column: ‘If a left-wing party had reached Ukip’s size and consequence, the media would be fascinated. But, because of its old-fashioned and decidedly provincial approach, it has been practically ignored. In the 2004 European elections, the party gained a sensational 16 per cent of the vote. Had it been the Greens or the communists that had pulled off this feat, the BBC would have gone crazy. Instead it chose not to mention this event, coolly classifying Ukip as “other”.’

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress