Phew, What a Scorcher!

by Richard North
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2012/01/i-couldnt-resist-it.html

Mr Blake Does It Again!

Sword of Damascus
by Richard Blake
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
Paperback Edition: 16th February 2012
432pp, £7.99
Kindle Version £6.99
ISBN: 978-1444709681

Richard Blake’s novel The Sword of Damascus, has now been published in paperback by Hodder & Stoughton. His earlier novels have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, Slovak and Complex Chinese. This is the fourth in his series of critically-acclaimed and internationally best-selling historical thrillers.

End War by Ending the State

by David D’Amato
http://c4ss.org/?p=9610

Much has been made of last Thursday’s announcement that, as reported by the New York Times, the US Department of Defense will take its “first major step toward shrinking its budget after a decade of war.” The plan represents only a minor modification (if even that), but has been presented — by both its proponents and detractors in the US political establishment — as a veritable sea change.

Cultural Pessimism

CULTURAL PESSIMISM
by D.J. Webb

A nation in decline

England is a nation in decline, and as much as conservatives hope for the leadership to emerge that could stem the decline and encourage a cultural renaissance, we know in our bones that this will not, or cannot, happen. Patriotism seems to contain the seeds of its own antidote: revulsion—revulsion against what England has become. Just like Winston Smith in George Orwell’s novel 1984, who dreamt of the ‘Golden Country’,England is for us an image far removed from the country around us. If we love that image, we have to recoil from the Real England that surrounds us in our daily lives. We feel less and less confidence that there is any real thread of connection between the Golden Country and the Real England of today. Would a conservative be prepared to fight for a country such asEngland today? And if so, why? Out of nostalgia? Or confusion?

Why Does Spam Have to be so Self-Parodic?

by Sean Gabb

I’ve just deleted this one:

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Stop and Search – What You Should Know

[The below information can be downloaded in .pdf format and printed in a handy card format by clicking here.]

Thomas Jefferson: Libertarian Wordsmith

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826):  Libertarian Wordsmith
Peter Richards

Libertarian Heritage No. 28

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/?q=node/688

Introduction

A letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my mind.  It carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow-laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right of self-government.¹

Review of The Iron Lady

Note: This review is not by a libertarian. However, it tells us clearly enough that the film is best avoided. My own thoughts on Margaret Thatcher are divided. On the one hand, she made us more than ever a military satrapy of the United States; her at best tepid libertarian rhetoric disguised our transformation from liberal social democracy to authoritarian corporatism; she may not even have noticed the growth of PC ideology and its institutional entrenchment – she certainly did nothing to restrain it. On the other, I do believe she meant well in ways that Major/Blair/Brown/Cameron obviously do not.

I did discuss all this a few years ago with Norman Tebbit. His response was that the economic mess they took over in 1979 was so big that there was no choice but to deal with it to the exclusion of all other issues. He told me to put aside all benefit of hindsight and see things from the perspective of 1980. Hardly anyone took multiculturalism and ecototalitarianism seriously. But the Soviet Union was still there, and showing no signs of imploding. There was a fiscal crisis and high inflation. The labour market was rigid. The unions were out of control. The Thatcherites saw their job as winning a set of battles that had been running since 1945. They had no time to worry about what might come next.

I can’t say I’m convinced, but it was a good defence. Certainly, when MHT resigned, I retired to the gents at work for a few manly sobs. I don’t propose to go and watch a film that sounds like more lefty triumphalism. One film I would go and see is “The Trial and Execution of Tony Blair.” Mrs Streep would make a good Cherie! SIG

Bailing out the Bonuses?

Bailing out the Bonuses?
by D.J. Webb

The £1m bonus to be received by Stephen Hester, chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, 83% owned by the taxpayer, raises interesting issues for libertarians.

LA Pointless Numberplate watch, no-2356b

David Davis

SIIIY JD…..B4 WEE (really)…..B4 14 SUE (conjures up worrying scenarios of interest to social workers, that one.)

Against Central Bank Independence

by David Webb

Hungary has come under EU pressure to reverse its attempt to bring its central bank under democratic control. I suppose you could say the  EU is consistent in that it wants monetary affairs conducted away from the glare of publicity–there is no democratic input into the European  Central Bank either. Of course, Hungary is not a member of the eurozone and so should be free to do as it pleases in monetary affairs, but, given its financial difficulties, the country is vulnerable to EU pressure not to dismantle the undemocratic technocracy, of which independent central banking is one element.

Shadow People: Attacks On Humans Increasing

Note: Will it bring men in white coats knocking on my door if I say that I “saw” such creatures when I was a very young child? That doesn’t mean I believe in their existence. Seeing things that aren’t there and can’t be there may be a part of tuning the human mind. But it’s interesting to read that others have seen them. Mr Blake describes one in his Blood of Alexandria. SIG

Second Note (26th April 2012): I’m reblogging this because people won’t stop looking at it.

The Corporate State: A House Divided Against Itself

by Kevin Carson
http://c4ss.org/?p=9584

The present historic epoch is one of transition from authoritarian institutions like states and corporations, to a society of self-organized networks and voluntary associations. As in any historic transition, second-order variables introduce high levels of turbulence to the process.

The Boy Friend

Ken Russell was frequently maddening. On the other hand, he could make his actors do the most uncharacteristic and even astonishing things. Here, for example, is Twiggy giving what I think is the best ever performance of All I Do the Whole Night Through.

Mrs Gabb and I watched the whole of The Boy Friend on telly last night. All else aside, it may be her only collaboration with Ken Russell in which Glenda Jackson keeps all her clothes on….

Still here

David Davis

I don’t know really how people who have stuff to do can find enough time to blog. At least it’s rather easier today than trying to keep a “diary”. Does anyone remember those? And you couldn’t even publish them. Not easily anyway.

We are embarrassed by the lack of content put up by us this last few days, but there are always other things that need to be done.

 

Thoughts on Privatisation

by David Webb

Privatisation of services – which is basically what libertarians are calling for, along with an elimination of personal taxation – suffers from the key flaw that the bureaucratisation of our society extends to the private sector too: just because they are privatised, services do not have to be efficiently run, with lean management teams.

Libertarian Alliance Personal Numberplate watch edition 203a/5

David Davis

K4MAL (must be a Lebanese restaurateur), K9REN (seen a few weeks earlier but forgotten), WI6AN M, followed closely by another similar WW Beetle called WI6AN W (driven by a girl.) Hint: think famous coalfields.)

No: we are interested in the interesting ones. KEN 699P does not cut the cake, nore does J233 RON, or P333 SHE. These are merely unimaginative and cheap.

Nadine Dorries MP and the Quest for Sexual Abstinence

by Sean Gabb

I have just heard that Nadine Dorries has withdrawn her Sex Education (Required Content) Bill. If passed, this would have required schoolgirls to discuss abstinence in the classroom. The summary of the Bill taken from the UK Parliament website is as follows:

Change You can believe in….

Walter E. Kaegi: Emperor of Byzantium

Heraclius: Emperor of Byzantium
Walter E. Kaegi
Cambridge University Press, 2003, 380pp
ISBN 0 521 81459 6
Reviewed by Richard Blake

This is the first biography of Heraclius in over a century, and the first ever in English. That a biography was worth writing should be clear from the book’s cover note: