June 10, 2005
Tories go nuclear.
I have a post about their evil plans for your town over at Biased BBC.
While I'm on the subject, why exactly didn't Obi-Wan just kill Anakin while he had the chance? Leaving him there lying on the lava wasn't prudent and wasn't even merciful either.
(Dr Who spoilers coming up. Presumably you had already figured out that Anakin survives.)
Just goes to show. Never let wimpy liberals into space. A trillion life-forms fried because Tom Baker wouldn't exterminate the Daleks when he had the chance, but does Dr Who learn from this? Oh no, Christopher Ecclescake is still at it with the Slitheen chick. Apparently the only options open to him are (a) to let this intermittently repentant mass-murderer and mayor of Cardiff skip away to wreak xenocide and municipal socialism without penalty, or (b) to take her back to Slitheeny Prime to be tortured to death in acetic acid in accordance with Slitheen folkways.
Yes, it's another Russell T. Davies fake dilemma. Davies is a good scriptwriter - there mere mention of his name lines our entire household up in front of the TV - but some kind friend needs to take him to one side and gently eviscerate him with a sonic screwdriver until he gets a grip on this issue.
There are other options, friend. One could call upon Jack whatsisname, for instance; the guy from the future masquerading as an American volunteer pilot with the RAF. Does he not have upon his person as part of the accoutrements of an officer a nice chunky Browning 9mm service pistol? Perhaps not, my husband tells me. It might be an Enfield .38 revolver. Let us not quibble. Enough rounds from either would extinguish life in a relatively quick and painless manner, even eight-foot tall green life. Failing that, the Doctor could have slipped her an avocado vinaigrette.
And since when has the Doctor been one for "we must obey the law no matter how cruel" anyway? If he's taking that line, Jack has deserted from the forces of the Crown in time of war. Foreign national or not, future national or not, it is the Doctor's solemn duty to escort him to officers of the military police so that he can be court-martialled and shot.
June 09, 2005
I have a post up
at Samizdata asking why G8 protestors don't give their all their spare money to the poor.
Self-regulation has not worked.
The Guardian has still not yet reported that John Kerry had worse grades at Yale than George Bush.
June 08, 2005
I have been infected
by a horribly contagious virus that ordinary medicine is helpless to cure. Yes, that one.Number of books I own: Um, several thousand. I can't count properly because they are in complete disorder and half of them are in boxes in the loft.
Last book I bought: The Storage Book by Cynthia Innons. Because I know I have a problem. I got this at a garage sale for 50p. Now I have find somewhere to store it.
Last book I (re)read: 'Conciliation with America' by Edmund Burke. Despite sounding so swanky this is really true.
Five books that mean a lot to me: I assume it's like Desert Island Discs and one excludes the Bible and Shakespeare. Which leaves...
1) 'Free to Choose' by Milton and Rose Friedman. Obvious or what?
2) Wow. One of the choices of my source of infection would also be mine and for practically the same reasons. Scott said,
"'Godel, Escher, Bach - an Eternal Golden Braid' - After about 10 tries, I've never been able to read it straight through, but with every effort I learn a bit more. I'm trying again right now."OK, unlike Scott I am not trying again right now. But I will.
3) Most of the books that mean the most to most people are books read in childhood. They have proportionally more effect. So one of my choices simply must be C.S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles. I'm sure they have been published in one volume somewhere, so I claim they count as one book not seven.
4) Another (slightly later) childhood favourite that I shall defiantly count as one book is Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. The part about Arkady Darell starts when she was two days past fourteen - and I was two days past fourteen when I got to that point, having read like mad in every spare moment since opening the boxed set on my birthday.
5) The fifth one is really difficult. Whatever I choose, I will think of something better five minutes after pressing "publish." A science book? Something from the classics? A book about history? All of these are pipped at the post in terms of meaning a lot to me by the first collection of Bernard Levin's articles I ever bought, 'Taking Sides.' As I have said before, it made me heartily wish there was a way that I, too, could write my opinions about everything down and find someone to read them.
Tag Five More: Aagh, I like playing these games but I hate doing this. The process of choosing hits some social inhibition that probably dates back from childhood when I was always chosen second last for netball. As usual, I think I'll say that anyone who wants to play should just nominate me as having chosen them.
More snapshots of Zimbabwe
from Normblog. My God, what will we be saying a year from now about these events? That they were just one more torment in that country's continuing agony - or that they were the darkest hour before the dawn?Also read this post commenting on a Guardian article about foreign Jihadis in Iraq.
A stray thought: why do I talk more about Zimbabwe and Iraq than about Darfur or the DR Congo? Because there is more to say when, despite all the suffering, there is more hope.
A voice from inside the storm.
I discovered The Zimbabwean Pundit via this comment at Samizdata. There are near daily posts on "Operation Murambatsvina", the ruthless government "cleanup" that Mugabe has ordered of makeshift homes and street traders.
Some people are so sensitive.
Tim Worstall reports that he, along with Alex Singleton, has been accused of being a "reactionary individual" and peddlar of a "mixture of lies, stupidity and prejudice" by Owen of Owen's Musings who, oddly, says in the comments that he did not mean to insult TW personally.Well, yeah, I can go with that. Owen actually says that a category of reactionary individuals are peddling the mixture of lies, stupidity and prejudice and names Worstall and Singleton as individual members of this category, adding for good measure that Singleton is "posing as an Institute". How anyone could take that as personal insult is beyond me.
ADDED LATER: I should have added that both parties' arguments about development are well worth reading. Not surprisingly, I agree with Tim Worstall's more, but, as I said in an earlier post Owen (whose surname I do not see stated) is a development professional who obviously knows the subject. Pity he shoots his mouth off.
STILL LATER: Owen has amended the post and appended a note saying that he wrote in anger and apologising to those he offended.
June 07, 2005
The fiscal theme park.
Stewart writes:In your Monday posting about VAT you quote the Telegraph as saying: "the Vat-men decided that a "profit" and a "loss" are the same thing".Well of course they did.
The Telegraph goes on to state: "Mr Graham plans an appeal in the High Court, where he hopes to find a judge who lives in the real world."
Unfortunately VAT has nothing to do with the real world.
Mr Graham has clearly not come across this judgement by Lord Justice Sedley:
"Beyond the everyday world lies the world of VAT, a kind of fiscal theme park in which factual and legal realities are suspended or invented. In this complex paralleled universe… relatively uncomplicated solutions are a snare and diversion.”
- Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Group Plc v Customs and Excise Commissioners [2001] STC 1476 at [54]
Messages of support
have been coming in for my mission statement.Graeme writes:
Power to your elbow, blog-babe!Captain Heinrichs writes:
Well, one out of two can be considered an adequate level of achievement.Gentlemen, I shall strive to be worthy.
Amnesty International.
You gotta laugh. First they see a Gulag that isn't there. Then they puff an interview with the man who refused to see the genocide that was there.Also see this post from Chicago Boyz. Oh, and according to Nick Cohen Amnesty aren't so much into prisoners of conscience any more. Anti-poverty campaigning must come first. (Via Stephen Pollard.)
Sheesh, I once volunteered for these guys. Spent the day licking envelopes. Give me back my spit!
Gordon waives the rules.
Brett Taylor thought up that title and responded to yesterday's post on the waiver of VAT for the Live 8 concert with this email:I have been wondering today whether our Charitable Chancellor has any right to waive VAT on an organisation. Even your good self seems to accept it readily. I mean, if he took a fancy to some floozie walking down the street could he waive her income tax? Could Lamont have waived the duty on his purchases from Threshers? I always assumed that all those details in the budget are written into each year's Finance Bill and guillotined through parliament, but maybe I'm mistaken and he does in fact have arbitrary power.That's Lamont's alleged purchases from Thresher's, Brett. But seriously, does our present Chancellor actually have the legal power to exempt those he likes from VAT? Anyone know?
June 06, 2005
In contrast
to Zimbabwe, Australia has been peaceful, prosperous and democratic for more than a century. Michael Jennings praises the Australian constitution, which combines elements from the British and American systems. Whether the "lucky country" is lucky because of its constitution I do not know.Still on the subject of constitutions, JEM wrote:
In short, the fundamental difference between the American Constitution and virtually all others is that it was not attempting to change the status quo but merely to affirm it and set it in stone. Indeed the entire American Revolution/War of Independence (select title to taste) was not a revolution at all but simply a fight to retain the existing "rights of Englishmen", as the 'revolutionaries' themselves put it; really it was a civil war.By the way, the American Constitution is not necessarily as unimpeachable as many suppose. The story is told of the day in 1940 when Einstein and his friend Kurt Gödel (of Gödel's Theorm and Douglas Hofstadter's monumental and brilliant metaphorical fugue on minds and machines, 'Gödel, Escher, Bach : An Eternal Golden Braid' fame) went from Princeton to the NJ state capital Trenton, to appear before Judge Philip Forman to be examined with a view to being inducted into US citizenship. The Judge turned to Gödel and began, "You have German citizenship up to now." Gödel interrupted him, "Excuse me sir, Austrian." "Anyhow, the wicked dictator! but fortunately that is not possible in America." "On the contrary," Gödel interjected, "I know how that can happen. I have discovered a logical and legal way of transforming the United States into a dictatorship." It took all Einstein's efforts to stop the discussion continuing in this direction, and turn it back to safer topics.
In any case, there have been imitators of the American Constitution. For example, when Bismarck came to create a constitution for the Kaiserreich in the 1870s, he followed the US example to the letter, except that instead of an elected President as head of state and chief executive there was an hereditary Kaiser. Stalin's constitution for the Soviet Union was a virtual word-for-word translation of the US original, and a lot of good it did too.
The point, I would suggest, is that things like constitutions only work if they do little more than confirm the existing way; they can, of themselves, change virtually nothing. And when the existing way is in general considered satisfactory, a formal constitution would make little difference. This is the argument against a written British constitution although I am not personally convinced by this line of reasoning, as a written constitution would be at least be some sort of bulwark against future erosion of rights.
But then remember Gödel...
Tim Worstall's
Britblog roundup is rounded and up. Including the post about, ah, Parisian social history that everyone's talking about.
Zimbabwe's Year Zero.
Perry de Havilland says violence is the only answer left. I read this and then sort of waited to feel shocked.Still waiting. Perry quotes the Telegraph:
Across Zimbabwe, the United Nations estimates that 200,000 people have lost their homes, with the poorest townships bearing the brunt of Mr Mugabe's onslaught. "The vast majority are homeless in the streets," said Miloon Kothari, the UN's housing representative.I have no doubt this policy will find its admirers in the West, as Pol Pot's forced exodus did.... the regime is also seeking to depopulate the cities, driving people into the countryside where the MDC is virtually non-existent and the ruling Zanu-PF Party dominates.
The Herald, the official daily newspaper, urged "urbanites" to go "back to the rural home, to reconnect with one's roots and earn an honest living from the soil our government repossessed under the land reform programme".
That was really
a roundabout way of saying that I've had a busy half term and I am not up with the news. I gather someone said something or other about the EU referendum. Fine, whatever. I also gather that the Chancellor has decided to waive the VAT for the Live 8 concert. How fine to be Bob Geldof and not have to pay tax on your charity concert because it is for a good cause! Less well-connected promoters of charity concerts aren't so lucky.Hundreds of charities will learn with shock of the recent ruling by a VAT tribunal that HM Customs and Excise are right to demand up to £100,000 from a country house opera company, which thought it was exempt from VAT because all its profits go to charitable causes. The case arose because, in their interpretation of EC law, the Vat-men decided that a "profit" and a "loss" are the same thing. The tribunal has now agreed.And
As a trustee of the charity, Mr Graham's mistake, in the eyes of the Vat-men, was to write a letter to his fellow-trustees confirming that, in the event of any losses, he would meet them out of his own pocket. HM Customs swooped on this to argue that this gave him a "financial interest" in the charity.Perhaps the opera guys should threaten to call down a million-strong yoof swarm on little Longborough? That seems to be the way to get exemption from the law.
To succeed in the dog-eat-beetle world of the blogosphere
, each blog must have its own unique "take" on the news. There's plenty of hot shots out there aiming to be first with the instant punditry. There are not a few who endeavour to supply more considered commentary after taking time to reflect. As I see it, my niche is to combine both these roles.To be shallow-minded and late: that is my mission.