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Alex Singleton is normally found on the Adam Smith Institute Blog, but lately he’s been writing for Samizdata.
He has an article about fair trade coffee — something I’ve been meaning to write about for a long time, and an article about anti-globalisationists, a subtect I’ve touched on more than once.
They’re good articles because they summarise the issues nicely, and are therefore a good place to send people who don’t understand.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Links at 5:41 AM EDT
The Raving Atheist has concisely summarised the difference in opinions of the two main presidential canditates on the subject of gay marriage. Meanwhile, since writing unsolicited letters does not work, perhaps you can influence the elections more directly (and get your kids to help, too).
Posted by Rob Fisher as Imaginary Friends at 5:11 AM EDT
On Friday a colleague at my employer’s office in California kindly took me with him to the firing range. I got to fire everything from a .22 Ruger, to a 9mm semi-automatic, to a .44 magnum revolver. The .44 magnum certainly let me know it was there! I put quite a lot of holes in lots of peices of paper and had fantastic time.
Putting aside for the moment all the self defence arguments against the handgun ban, I find it extremely vexing that what should be one of my main hobbies is denied me as long as I live in the UK. Left to my own devices I would have accumulated a huge collection of handguns by now, and would probably have become quite proficient with them. I resent that the British government not only steals a good proportion of my income but also sees fit to spoil my fun.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 3:06 AM EDT
Over at The Daily Ablution, Scott Burgess is chronicling the Guardian’s backpeddling over their ridiculous Operation Clarke County.
Some columnists got the Clarke County, Ohio electoral roll and gave out names and addresses on the Guardian web site so that readers in the UK could write with their opinions of George Bush. It backfired somewhat, though, when various bloggers got hold of the story and unleashed an email backlash upon the Guardian.
It’s all very amusing, and I’m very much looking forward to Bush winning the election just to see the Guardian’s reaction.
Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 2:56 AM EDT
Come election time, Americans get to vote on various propositions for state laws. For example, proposition 72 proposes that it be made mandatory for businesses to provide health insurance for their employees and charge them no more than 20% of the cost.
Various TV commercials paid for by those with vested interests bash out the arguments for and against the propositions. The vote-yes-on-72 commercial has a old woman in an emergency room going on about poor people not having health care. The vote-no-on-72 commercial has a woman apparently running a small restaurant complaining that the proposition will cost her money and possibly put her out of business.
Many of the other proposition commercials follow the same pattern: bleeding heart liberal vs. hard-nosed business person. It seems to me that the hard-nosed-business people are missing a trick. They should use the same kind of emotive imagery as the lefties. For example, the vote-no-to-72 commercial should feature unemployed people crying and talking about how they lost their jobs when their employers couldn’t afford to pay their health insurance. Then people could feel warm and fuzzy about voting to let people spend their money as they wish.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Advertising, Authorised Theft at 7:06 AM EDT
Each morning there is a fresh new copy of USA Today outside my hotel room. Some of the stories within catch my attention.
Yesterday I read about a high school student who informed the authorities about a group plotting a “Columbine-style massacre“. The informant was later charged as a conspirator in the plot. The charges were “conspiracy to commit mass murder” and “promotion of anarchy”. Would these kids really have done it or were they just playing? It might not be possible to tell. I don’t like the idea of locking people up for things they haven’t done yet. And I find it surprising that promotion of anarchy is a crime in the USA.
Today there was an editorial about market forces being more effective than TV regulators. A supposedly lewd show called Married in America was so bad that no-one watched it and it was cancelled. But the FCC still saw fit to fine the broadcaster $1.2 million on the strength of 159 complaints. The sentiment of the article is noble: market forces solve problems better than regulators. All well and good, but it’s possible to concieve of a well made, highly successful lewd show. In this case surely we need regulators to protect our families. Well, no. What market forces actually do is identify and solve the real problem. In this case the real problem was not that Married in America was lewd, but that it was a load of rubbish. Incidentally, the problem of protecting our families from lewd shows has already been solved by the market. As the article says, “Besides, all TVs made in recent years are equipped to let parents block any program they wish.”
Incidentally, the number of articles I’ve noticed so far about reports or studies admonishing people to eat less, smoke less, drink less, drive less or do anything else they like less: 0
Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 6:59 AM EDT
A woman was run over while crossing the road near a speed camera. According to the coroner, John Pollard, this may have been partly because the driver was looking at his speedometer and not the road.
Mr Pollard said that cameras were sometimes responsible for “distracting drivers, even momentarily, who look at them and their speed rather than the road”.
His view was supported by the police accident investigator called to the scene. Pc Michael Jeffrey told the inquest: “They do tend to divert drivers’ attention away from other areas and they concentrate solely on their speed.”
I found Mr Pollard’s next comment somewhat poignant:
“We are becoming such a protecting society that unless individuals feel they are protected by state or legislation, they don’t seem to bother to protect themselves.”
Posted by Rob Fisher as Driving at 9:12 PM EDT
In June, a woman and her sister were shot at her home by her estranged husband. Neighbours immediately rushed to help.
Armed only with a piece of wood. Mr Gibson and his 58-year-old wife Georgie, went to the aid of their neighbour, Vicky Horgan, after hearing gunshots.
Georgie Gibson tended the victims, while another neighbour looked after the children. This is an example of a community voluntarily coming together to help those in need.
The state, meanwhile, in the form of the police force and the ambulance service for which we all ‘donate’ so much money, waited it out in case the gunman was still at large and posed a threat. Later the two sisters died from their wounds. If the emergency services had arrived sooner they might have been saved.
An inquiry reported that the delay “could not be justified.” The head of Thames Valley Police said, “We need to rebalance the caution with which we deploy lethal force with our duty to protect the public.” In the Telegraph, Boris Johnson attributed the failure to the health and safety culture gone mad.
As soon as the call came through that a killer was on the loose, the cops didn’t leap into their armoured cars, with their Kevlar vests and their carbines.
Oh no, they acted in accordance with the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Manual of Guidance on the Police Use of Firearms, taken in conjunction with the Thames Valley firearms policy, and for 35 minutes, they stuck with their immediate decision - in spite of ever more insistent assurances that the coast was clear, and that the shooter had fled - that no policeman, no matter how formidably accoutred, should go in person.
The ineffectiveness of the emergency services in this case is indeed shocking, but the commentators I have mentioned have missed an important point. No police force in the world could have come to their aid in the time between the two sisters seeing the man with the gun, and their being shot. Without guns of their own they were helpless. If the sisters or one of those helpful neighbours had had a gun things might have gone differently. The situation may have ended in a bloodless standoff, or if one of the helpful neighbours had shot the attacker the ambulance crew could have gone to help without fear.
As it was, help may have arrived sooner if someone had reported that Mr Gibson was “armed” with “a peice of wood”. Carrying such an item with the intention of using for self defence makes it an offensive weapon in British law, and that makes Mr Gibson a criminal.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Self Defense at 8:48 PM EDT
Whatever tax reduction rhetoric they come up with, I suppose I’ll never be able to vote for the Tories now:
…we will support, encourage and accelerate the implementation of random drug-testing of pupils.
That was the shadow home secretary David Davis, as quoted by the BBC. Leeds Today has more on the subject.
It’s not a new idea, Blunkett has already tried it. If I had kids I would not want them subjected to the indignity of random drugs tests. They are children, not criminals.
Posted by Rob Fisher as General at 9:52 PM EDT
They did it! Scaled Composites have won the Ansari X-Prize today, on the 47th Anniversary of the first satellite launch. Much commentary on Samizdata and Slashdot. The great thing about this is that is was all done without stealing a penny of taxpayers’ money.
Next up, Virgin commercial space flights and the Bigelow orbital prize. These are exciting times: I look forward to my trip into space!
Posted by Rob Fisher as General at 11:56 PM EDT