Quotulatiousness

April 24, 2013

A call to abolish the draft … the NFL draft, that is

Filed under: Business, Football, Law, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

S.M Oliva calls for the abolition of the NFL’s annual offseason TV mega-event in Reason:

The sports draft is an anomaly of the American labor market. In most industries new hires are free to seek employment wherever there’s an opening. Even promising high school athletes may accept a scholarship offer from any college. But the NFL shield has stood resolutely against labor freedom since 1935 when Bert Bell, then the struggling owner of the last-place Philadelphia Eagles, convinced the rest of the nine-team league that poorly performing clubs should be rewarded with first choice of promising college talent. Under this new system, a “drafted” player could only negotiate a contract with a single team.

[. . .]

Regardless of how players come into the league, they are all subject to a salary cap that fixes total compensation as a percentage of football-related revenues. The present collective bargaining agreement further constrains rookie salaries, and roster limits prevent a team from simply stockpiling players. All the draft does is increase the likelihood that the most promising new talent — the players taken at the top of the first round — will go to teams with a demonstrated history of mismanagement.

This should concern the league as it faces a rising tide of concussion-related lawsuits brought by former players. While the NFL tinkers with playing rules in an effort to make the game “safer,” there’s been no effort to question the role of the draft system in promoting unsafe working conditions. Let’s say Player X is a highly touted quarterback prospect drafted by Team A. What if Team A has a poor offensive line and a coach prone to recklessness with his quarterbacks? Player X can’t turn around and negotiate with Team B, which offers a better line and a coach with a stronger record of developing young quarterbacks. Player X is stuck with Team A, and if that means he’s out of football after four years, a record number of sacks and a half-dozen concussions, then so be it.

April 21, 2013

“Fatally flawed” CISPA bill passed by US congress

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:57

The BBC reports on the unwelcome CISPA bill and its progress through the legislative machinery:

The US House of Representatives has passed the controversial Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act.

Cispa is designed to help combat cyberthreats by making it easier for law enforcers to get at web data.

This is the second time Cispa has been passed by the House. Senators threw out the first draft, saying it did not do enough to protect privacy.

Cispa could fail again in the Senate after threats from President Obama to veto it over privacy concerns.

[. . .]

The bill could fail again in the Senate after the Obama administration’s threat to use its veto unless changes were made. The White House wants amendments so more is done to ensure the minimum amount of data is handed over in investigations.

The American Civil Liberties Union has also opposed Cispa, saying the bill was “fatally flawed”. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reporters Without Borders and the American Library Association have all voiced similar worries.

Documentary War for the Web includes final interview with Aaron Swartz

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:51

CNET‘s Declan McCullagh talks about an upcoming documentary release:

From Aaron Swartz’s struggles with an antihacking law to Hollywood’s lobbying to a raft of surveillance proposals, the Internet and its users’ rights are under attack as never before, according to the creators of a forthcoming documentary film.

The film, titled War for the Web, traces the physical infrastructure of the Internet, from fat underwater cables to living room routers, as a way to explain the story of what’s behind the high-volume politicking over proposals like CISPA, Net neutrality, and the Stop Online Piracy Act.

“People talk about security, people talk about privacy, they talk about regional duopolies like they’re independent issues,” Cameron Brueckner, the film’s director, told CNET yesterday. “What is particularly striking is that these issues aren’t really independent issues…. They’re all interconnected.”

The filmmakers have finished 17 lengthy interviews — including what they say is the last extensive one that Swartz, the Internet activist, gave before committing suicide in January — that have yielded about 24 hours of raw footage. They plan to have a rough cut finished by the end of the year, and have launched a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo that ends May 1. (Here’s a three-minute trailer.)

Swartz, who was charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, faced a criminal trial that would have begun this month and the possibility of anywhere from years to over a decade in federal prison for alleged illegal downloads of academic journal articles. He told the filmmakers last year, in an interview that took place after his indictment, that the U.S. government posed a more serious cybersecurity threat than hackers:

    They cracked into other countries’ computers. They cracked into military installations. They have basically initiated cyberwar in a way that nobody is talking about because, you know, it’s not some kid in the basement somewhere — It’s President Obama. Because it’s distorted this way, because people talk about these fictional kids in the basement instead of government officials that have really been the problem, it ends up meaning that cybersecurity has been an excuse to do anything…

    Now, cybersecurity is important. I think the government should be finding these vulnerabilities and helping to fix them. But they’re doing the opposite of that. They’re finding the vulnerabilities and keeping them secret so they can abuse them. So if we do care about cybersecurity, what we need to do is focus the debate not on these kids in a basement who aren’t doing any damage — but on the powerful people, the people paying lots of money to find these security holes who then are doing damage and refusing to fix them.

April 20, 2013

The problematic crowd-sourcing of justice

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:35

In the Globe and Mail, Tabatha Southey is uncomfortable with the way members of Anonymous, Reddit, 4chan, and other online quasi-organizations leaped into the fray:

The Internet is brimming with people who want to help. To help you prune an orchid, perfect the shape of your gnocchi. Shortly after the bombings this week, hundreds of Bostonians posted offers of accommodations, spare rooms and couches.

Most assistance is graciously received, yet I was surprised last week to see how many people embraced the announcement by the self-appointed public conscience Anonymous that it had investigated the unbearably sad Nova Scotia case of 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons, who killed herself after she was allegedly gang-raped at a summer party, then was tormented over the incident.

[. . .]

Anonymous as an organization doesn’t really exist. It’s more of a meme — a concept, or behaviour that spreads within a community — than an agency. Anyone who says they’re Anonymous is Anonymous, which makes the groundswell of support its actions received so understandable.

I think a lot of us, upon learning of Rehtaeh’s death, wanted to go to Nova Scotia and shake those kids until something that looked closer to truth came out. Anonymous’s motivations are much like ours, and it can be difficult to remember that the presumption of innocence should be given more weight, not less, the more heinous the crime; the part that is almost the best in us screams otherwise.

Anonymous is not composed of superheroes, nor is it evil. Anonymous is just your nephew, or your neighbour, or you. We cede our pursuit of justice to that highly distractable quarter to our peril.

One only had to see that massive game of Where’s Waldo? taking place on Reddit this week to witness both the good intention, the potential and the problems inherent in crowd-sourced jurisprudence.

Boston’s security theatre performance

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:20

At Popehat, Clark explains why the security theatre response to the Marathon bombers was a lot of show, but not proportional to the actual threat posed by the two fugitives:

First, just in case it’s not utterly obvious, I’m glad that the two murderous cowards who attacked civilians in Boston recently are off the streets. One dead and one in custody is a great outcome.

That said, a large percent of the reaction in Boston has been security theater. “Four victims brutally killed” goes by other names in other cities.

In Detroit, for example, they call it “Tuesday”.

…and Detroit does not shut down every time there are a few murders.

“But Clark,” I hear you say, “this is different. This was a terrorist attack.”

Washington DC, during ongoing sniper terrorist attacks in 2002 that killed twice as many people, was not shut down.

Kileen Texas, after the Fort Hood terrorist attack in 2009 that killed three times as many people, was not shut down.

London, after the bombing terrorist attack in 2005 that killed more than ten times as many people, was not shut down.

Counting the cost of the city-wide lockdown:

First, the unprecedented shutdown of a major American city may have increased safety some small bit, but it was not without a cost: keeping somewhere between 2 and 5 million people from work, shopping, and school destroyed a nearly unimaginable amount of value. If we call it just three million people, and we peg the cost at a mere $15 per person per hour, the destroyed value runs to a significant fraction of a billion dollars.

[. . .]

Third, keeping citizens off the street meant that 99% of the eyes and brains that might solve a crime were being wasted. Eric S Raymond famously said that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow“. It was thousands of citizen photographs that helped break this case, and it was a citizen who found the second bomber. Yes, that’s right — it wasn’t until the stupid lock-down was ended that a citizen found the second murderer:

    boston.com

    The boat’s owners, a couple, spent Friday hunkered down under the stay-at-home order. When it was lifted early in the evening, they ventured outside for some fresh air and the man noticed the tarp on his boat blowing in the wind, according to their his son, Robert Duffy.

    The cords securing it had been cut and there was blood near the straps.

We had thousands of police going door-to-door, searching houses…and yet not one of them saw the evidence that a citizen did just minutes after the lock-down ended.

Come for the takedown of security theatre on a city-wide level, stay for the ultimate cops-and-donuts story.

April 19, 2013

Enviro-Apocalypse Now (or real soon, anyway)

Filed under: Books, Environment, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

At sp!ked, Tim Black reviews the latest environmental doom-mongering tome from Andrew Simms:

All of this ought to leave Simms & Co looking like the boys who cried climate catastrophe. Yet somehow, as Cancel the Apocalypse shows, they are continuing, unabashed, to preach environmental doom despite its palpable absence. In fact, the hyper-pessimism has even been ramped up a bit. ‘The horsemen are galloping and there are more than four of them’, Simms chirrups. ‘Climate change, financial meltdown, the global peak and decline of oil production, a mass extinction event of plant and animal species, overuse of fresh water supplies, soil loss, economic infrastructure increasingly vulnerable to external shocks — it’s the age of the complex super disaster.’ It seems devastating climate change is no longer enough for Simms; he wants to solicit a whole host of other unrelated, and highly debatable, phenomena for his narrative of woe. Cancelled? No way, Simms chortles: the apocalypse is back on.

So how is Simms able to maintain his unshakeable belief in our imminent destruction? What makes him and his tweedy, right-on puritan mates different to, say, William Miller, founder of the Second Adventists (later to become the Seventh Day Adventists), who, as Simms tells us, believed the day of reckoning would fall in 1843, 1845, 1846, 1849, 1851, 1874 and 1999?

The ostensible answer is that whereas previous doomsayers derived their predictions from ‘gobbledygook floating up from patterns of words and numbers dimly discerned in books about faith and belief’, Simms and his followers rely upon ‘verifiable scientific experiment’. Of course, The Science.

Which is funny, because Cancel the Apocalypse does not contain much in the way of ‘verifiable scientific experiment’. What it does feature, though, is a scientistic use of the authority of science to justify a whole range of dubious assertions. In Simms’ hands, science is no longer science. It is a metaphor, an authority-bolstering gloss, allowing him to talk, for example, of socio-historical phenomena such as the economy in terms of the laws of nature: ‘Just as physical laws constrain the maximum efficiency of a heat engine’, he writes, so ‘economic growth is constrained by the finite nature of our planet’s natural resources, the variable but ultimately bounded biocapacity of its oceans, fields, geology and atmosphere’; and later on, ‘the laws of physics mean it is not possible to create the order of such [economic] exchanges without a little something being lost [Simms is referring to the biosphere]’.

Tracking the Boston Marathon bombers

Filed under: Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:07

As a one-man blogging operation, I won’t even pretend to stay on top of the story from Boston. Colby Cosh, on the other hand, has a useful post at Maclean’s to bring you up to date on the news so far:

It has been a night of extraordinary scenes from Boston as the late shift gawps at an unfolding true-crime story as extraordinary as any since the O.J. Simpson saga. Earlier in the day the FBI published photos of two suspects in Tuesday’s bombing attack on the Boston Marathon. Men closely matching the description of those individuals knocked over a 7-Eleven in the city Thursday night, then are alleged to have slain a transit cop on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and briefly taken a hostage. They were tracked to the suburb of Watertown, where they engaged in a spectacular firefight with at least a dozen different police forces. One man, the suspected marathon bomber depicted wearing a black cap in the FBI photos, seems to have rushed the police with an explosive attached to his chest; he was dead on arrival at hospital and doctors said he presented with “blast injuries to the trunk” along with an uncountable number of bullet holes. The other man, the one supposedly spotted at the marathon wearing a white cap, clambered into a vehicle, drove through the police cordon, and remains at large.

The entire city of Boston has been locked down while they search for the surviving bomber, identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19. The dead suspect was his older brother.

“Recklessly normal” band inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Filed under: Cancon, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Jessica Allen on Rush:

The first time Maclean’s wrote about Rush was in our July 12, 1976, issue. Back then, Geddy Lee was 22 and the band’s music sent “teen-age fans into paroxysms of ecstasy.” But offstage, the three members were described as “recklessly normal.”

Not much has changed.

Rush’s fans are, well, unique. It was their ardour, after all, that persuaded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to include Rush among its 2013 inductees. Tonight, Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters will present Rush at the Hall of Fame ceremony in Los Angeles 10:30 p.m.

[. . .]

In 1997, Rush was the first rock band to be appointed officers of the Order of Canada since the national honor system, which recognizes “significant achievement in important fields of human endeavor” was created in 1967.

When asked about why it took so long for the band that produced 19 records in a row to reach gold or platinum certification in Canada to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, joining the ranks of bands like Abba, Aerosmith, The Talking Heads and Madonna, Lee suggested that it might have to do with the style of music they play: “Progressive rock is not accepted by this group of people who make this decision. Yes are not in the Hall. That’s an error. Deep Purple are not in the Hall. That’s an error. Moody Blues are not in the Hall. So prog-rock is viewed as a kind of lesser art form by the powers that be.”

April 18, 2013

Neologism of the week: “Glassholes”

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:06

Jason Perlow explains why Google Glass (or similar devices from other vendors) are inevitably going to be part of the future, and why many already refer to the users of such devices as “Glassholes”:

It could certainly be argued that whenever a new consumer technology enters society, those who are quick to adopt it are typically ridiculed by the have-nots. Eventually, many of these technologies become commonplace and are more accepted by the mainstream, particularly when they become more affordable.

This has pretty much always been the case, starting with the radio pager, then the cellular phone, text capable handsets, and then, of course, Bluetooth headsets, the smartphone and the tablet.

People who first used these things were once seen very much as elitist and not part of the mainstream, and they were considered disruptive.

To some extent, even with their popularity, they are still considered disruptive when used in various social contexts.

[. . .]

With Glass, because the device is being worn and there’s no indication of when it is being used, one has to assume that the wearer is recording everyone all of the time.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have serious issues with the notion that I could be recorded by everyone at any time.

Look, I am aware that law enforcement and government agencies have us under surveillance, and it’s not uncommon for people to be photographed and videoed hundreds of times per day, particularly if you live in a major city.

The growth of public surveillance has all kinds of civil liberties concerns, but it’s a done deal … you probably can’t avoid being recorded many times per day unless you stay at home with the blinds down (and turn off your cell phone, and avoid the internet, and …). The social and cultural issues around private surveillance will provide some fascinating legal wrangles in the very near future: where does my right to record (“lifelog”) all of my activities conflict with your right not to be so recorded? Will the concept of privacy be one of the first things jettisoned over the side?

Governments and law enforcement agencies will want maximum opportunity to use their surveillance tools — both for specific investigations and for general purpose Big Brothering — and if that means abandoning any pretense of protecting your privacy against invasion by non-government agencies, they’ll take it. They’re already 9/10ths of the way there as it is.

There are things you only say and do with close friends in confidence, others which may be revealed in private business meetings, et cetera. We all know and have seen what happens when supposedly “private” or unauthorized recordings are made behind closed doors and then leaked to the general public, either intentionally or accidentally.

It can cost someone their career. It can destroy one’s personal reputation. It will most certainly cause one strife with one’s friends and family. And as we have most recently seen, it can also cost you a Presidential Election.

He also discusses the possibility of social and technical controls to provide anti-lifelogging zones, which I strongly suspect will be simultaneously introduced almost immediately when Google Glass or similar technology is released to the public, and almost certainly more of a hassle for non-users of the technology for little or no actual benefit. It will be the usual politician’s syllogism: “Something must be done. This is something. Therefore we must do it.” As for the technical side, there is almost nothing more tempting to a certain kind of hacker than the technical equivalent of a “Do not touch” sign.

Obviously, for this type of anti-lifelogging tech to work, there has to be an agreed upon API or programmatic trigger signals that cannot easily be defeated by hackers.

But if it cannot be made to work, or if the effectiveness of the tech cannot be guaranteed, then I forsee situations where people will be forced to remove and surrender their devices in order to prevent the possibility of recording, as well as a change in our culture to be much more careful about what one says, even in very intimate situations.

And that is an Orwellian chilling effect that I think could be very harmful to the development of our society as a whole.

This chilling effect was evident in decades past in East Germany while the country was in fear of the ever-watching eyes and ears of the Stasi, which had perhaps the largest informant and surveillance network of any nation per capita in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, the USSR included.

QotD: J.R.R. Tolkien on the power of oratory

Filed under: Media, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell. For some the spell lasted only while the voice spoke to them, and when it spoke to another they smiled, as men do who see through a juggler’s trick while others gape at it. For many the sound of the voice alone was enough to hold them enthralled; but for those whom it conquered the spell endured when they were far away, and ever they heard that soft voice whispering and urging them. But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it.

J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Voice of Saruman”, The Two Towers, 1954.

April 16, 2013

Andy Baio: Copyright is the new Prohibition

Filed under: Business, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:58

Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick explains:

Andy Baio has an absolutely fantastic video presentation that he did recently for Creative Mornings/Portland on what he’s calling The New Prohibition. It’s half an hour long, but absolutely worth watching.

[. . .]

This video lets him talk a bit about the aftermath — to explain the true chilling effects of the threat and the eventual settlement. Baio is a creator. It’s in his blood. It’s what he’s always done, but after this he was afraid to create. Being threatened with a lawsuit, even if you believe you’re right, is a scary and possibly life-altering moment. Lots of people who have not been in those shoes think it’s nothing and that they could handle it. You don’t know.

As he notes in the talk, copyright law is probably the most violated law in the US after speeding and jaywalking (and I’m not even sure copyright infringement is really in third place in that list). But getting rung up for one of those gives you a “bad day” situation, not a ruined life. Copyright, on the other hand, can ruin your life. And chill your speech and creativity.

And this is the worst part: so many people, especially kids, are at risk. Baio also famously highlighted the prevalence of the phrase “no copyright intended” on YouTube. Tons of kids uploading videos use clips of music and videos with a phrase like that. Or with statements about fair use. Or with copyright law quotes. All, as he notes, to try to find that magic voodoo that wards off a possible lawsuit. Most of those people aren’t being sued.

But they could be.

Six political talking points on international trade that are myths

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:32

In Maclean’s, Stephen Gordon collects six of the most common myths politicians use to justify trade distorting policies:

1) Exports are good. Not true; exports are the costs we pay for engaging in international trade. Diverting domestic productive resources to producing more things for foreigners doesn’t increase our standards of living.

2) Imports are bad. This is point one restated: imports are the benefits from trade. The reason we engage in international trade is to obtain goods and services more cheaply than we can produce them for ourselves.

3) Trade deficits are bad. I went though this at length in this post: noting that a country has a trade deficit (or, more properly, a current account deficit) is the same thing as noting that domestic investment is larger than domestic savings. It’s not obvious why this is necessarily a bad thing.

4) Trade deficits are a sign of a slowing economy. The Canadian trade balance is generally counter-cyclical: falling during expansions and rising during recessions. A trade deficit is standard fare for Canadian expansions, not something to get concerned about.

5) Liberalized trade increases employment. Again, this is point one restated. Liberalized trade may increase the number of workers in certain export-oriented sectors. But the effect on total employment in the economy is zero.

6) Liberalized trade reduces employment. Again, this is point two restated. Liberalized trade may reduce the number of workers in certain sectors vulnerable to foreign competition. But the effect on total employment in the economy is still zero.

New study shows students of online courses learn as much as in traditional classes

Filed under: Education, Media, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:03

At Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok summarizes the findings from a recent large study:

In a large, randomized experiment Bowen et al. found that students enrolled in an online/hybrid statistics course learned just as much as those taking a traditional class (noted earlier by Tyler). Perhaps even more importantly, Bowen et al. found that the online model was significantly less costly than the traditional model, some 36% to 57% less costly to produce than a course using a traditional lecture format. In other words, since outcomes were the same, online education increased productivity by 56% to 133%! Online education trumps the cost disease!

Bowen et al. caution that their results on cost savings are speculative and it is true that they do not include the fixed costs of creating the course (either the online course or the traditional course) so these cost savings should be thought of as annual savings in steady-state equilibrium. The main reason these results are speculative, however, is that Bowen et al. only considered cost savings from faculty compensation. Long-run cost reductions from space savings may be even more significant, as the authors acknowledge.

The university model we’ve known for centuries is long overdue for change. However, remember that just about every new communication technology was touted as being “revolutionary” for education: the printing press, radio, movies, TV, and now online courses. The traditional university model has survived each new technological breakthrough relatively unscathed.

QotD: Media “experts” immediately after a tragedy

Filed under: Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:52

Right now, I could write segments on the idiot comments made by the usual suspects … but do you really need another piece of evidence to support the argument that, say, Cynthia McKinney is a lunatic? […] I can’t get all that revved up about it. She is what she is. If you really put much stock in her judgment of what’s “the real story” behind a horrific news event, theories that hear this awful news and immediately jump to elaborate theories of “false flag” operations and the notion that our local and federal law-enforcement ranks are full of men and women willing to set bombs and blow up children in order to score some sort of propaganda victory … well, then I doubt there’s anything anyone can say to dissuade you of that vast worldview you’ve constructed within your mind.

The conspiracy theorist is only a couple of steps away from the person who — often on Twitter — begins discussing who was behind it with way too much certainty. As I said on Twitter yesterday, I suspect that speculation, unhelpful as it is, is a coping mechanism: People attempt to make a sudden unexpected horror fit into pattern of known facts. If we can figure out who did it, we can find someone to feel anger and rage towards and, for some people, that’s a much easier emotion to deal with than shock, horror, fear, and sorrow.

The all-too-confident speculator is only a few steps away from the ordinarily knowledgeable terrorism expert or pundit yanked into a television studio at a moment’s notice and asked to speak, extemporaneously, about what could be behind these awful events based on nothing more than initial reports and the most horrific of images playing on a monitor just beyond the camera.

Jim Geraghty, “The Morning Jolt”, 2013-04-16

April 14, 2013

An alternative Britain would be “Cuba without the sunshine”

Filed under: Britain, History, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:06

Dominic Sandbrook recounts the history of a slightly different Britain: one where Margaret Thatcher lost to Jim Callaghan in 1978:

As historians now agree, Mrs Thatcher never really stood a chance: Britain was not ready for a woman prime minister. As she herself had remarked only eight years earlier: ‘There will not be a woman prime minister in my lifetime — the male population is too prejudiced.’

In her place, the Tories turned to the bumbling figure of Willie Whitelaw, an old-fashioned patrician Wet whom they decided would connect better with the British electorate.

In the meantime, the country was reeling from crisis to crisis. Scarcely had Callaghan returned to No 10 than his premiership was consumed in the notorious Winter of Discontent. As one group of workers after another — lorry drivers, railwaymen, bus drivers, ambulance drivers, caretakers, cleaners, even grave-diggers — walked out on strike for higher wages, the country ground to a halt.

Buoyed by his election victory, Callaghan was in no mood to compromise. Rather than break his declared 5 per cent national pay limit and risk higher inflation, he declared a State of Emergency and summoned the Army to drive Britain’s petrol tankers.

It was a catastrophic mistake. On February 12, 1979, a date that has gone down in history as Black Monday, fighting broke out between pickets and soldiers at one depot outside Hull.

In the chaos, one soldier — carrying live rounds, in contravention of orders — opened fire and killed five people. It was one of the most shocking moments in modern British history.

Callaghan resigned the next day, the last honourable act of a decent man overwhelmed by events. But contrary to his expectations, the Labour Party did not turn to his Chancellor, the bushy-browed Denis Healey.

Instead, they lurched to the Left and elected as their new Prime Minister Michael Foot, with his flowing white locks, walking stick and impassioned socialist rhetoric. The real power in the land, however, was Foot’s colleague Tony Benn, who replaced the disgruntled Healey as Chancellor. And in the next few years, it was Benn who presided over the most sweeping socialist measures any Western country had seen in living memory.

To the horror of many in industry, Benn insisted that Britain’s declining economy needed a dose of shock therapy. The top rate of income tax went up to 98 per cent, and the government announced a one-off 5 per cent ‘equality levy’ on households with income over £50,000 a year.

As frightened investors began to withdraw their money from the City of London, Benn introduced sweeping exchange controls. He also, in an attempt to shore up Britain’s crumbling manufacturing base, introduced the most stringent import tariffs in the Western world.

The reaction was pandemonium. As inflation shot over 25 per cent and unemployment went above two million, horrified European leaders insisted that Britain’s new policies were incompatible with membership of the Common Market.

But Benn was adamant. ‘You turn if you want to,’ he told his party conference in 1980. ‘Labour’s not for turning.’

The following year, as the economic picture continued to worsen, the Government introduced controls to stop people taking sterling out of the country. As a result, the foreign package holiday market collapsed — although landladies in Blackpool said they had never seen more business.

There were rumours that Foot was planning to move his turbulent Chancellor, but they were blown away when, in April 1982, Argentine forces landed in the Falklands.

H/T to Roger Henry for the link.

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