The Libertarian Alliance: BLOG

David Davis

Samizdata does a keenly-written and thoughtful hatchet-job on Gordon Ramsay. Wish I’d thought of that attack myself, it’s good and to the point, specially in the persent planetary climate of global cooling and impending famine-disaster, and how globalisation could save whole populations of humans (who then would not die) in return for money. AttaPerry!

I have, as it says, been becoming increasingly irritated, and hurt also, by “telechefs” and their policy-positions (which they affect to have, as is strange) for some years. There is no wikipage for these people which I also find strange, given the effect they seem to have on the political life of the nation as regards food and consumption patterns.

On the one hand, they (seem to) seek to spice up our gustatory lives and palates, with delectably-prepared and televisually-fondled stuff that looks scrumptious, and sounds even better. They use all sorts of materials that seem exotic and come from faraway places, like Peru (strawberries and asparagus in the Northen Hemisphere winter - grand! Why the f*** didn’t we think of that years ago?)

On the other hand, having got famous and affording Ferraris and other restaurants, they are thus therefore available to be brown-nosed by Al Gore and other pop singers and film stars of his ilk. Gore and the othet film stars and pop singers are of course all great scientists and logicians, and so “telechefs”, falling under the baleful influence of these devils in return for money, seek to do these things:-

(a) ruin any pleasure gained from authorised-daytime-eating-activity for British schoolchildren, and

(b) support the pre-capitalist and barbarian notion that all food ought to be “locally grown or raised”. EU grandees, who do and support nothing of this kind whatever (or they would get bored and therefore starve), eat at their restaurants.

My own comment on the samizdata post, about what could be done to telechefs, seems to have been removed. Perhaps I will decide not to offer to write for them after all….Or, perhaps their spam-filter took out “television-cooking-pron”. I really thought “pron” would get through. Oh well, never mind. Perhaps they will de-censor it for you, I hope so (see comments.)

Why, apart from the tragic lottery of geography and weather patterns, does this sort of disastrous aftermath never happen in capitalist countries?

David Davis

The Daily Telegraph’s report here today has some breathtakingly direct quoting of aid workers’ responses, plus a grand piece of litotic understatement by the “secretary-general” (whatever that is) of the UN (whatever that may be.)

How’s this for a suggestion?

He said that it might be “prudent to focus instead on mobilising all available resources and capacity for the emergency response efforts”.

Yeah, right. And this…

The US air force was earlier reported by Thai mediators to have been granted permission to deliver aid. However, hopes of a breakthrough were quickly crushed as the permission was either withdrawn or announced prematurely.

Words fail me, and I’m a blogger-and-all.

I suppose that it’s the fault of the poor Burmese people. If, on encountering “aid workers” and “aid” (which may contain capitalist stuff, in, er coloured packing, and which may be useful) the people start to see through the wall of tyranny surrounding them, then they will have fialed their “dear leaders”, and will have to be dissolved and re-elected. I’d have air-dropped the stuff anyway. Burmese soldiers can’t confiscate, use or sell more loot than they can physically drive off with anyway, and we can just drop some more.

Perhaps the first drops should be neat bourbon. Then the real stuff can follow after the entire army is dead drunk (or dead.)

And now we have this: the stalinists in power in Burma have “seized” the first two planeloads of food. I wonder why?