Thursday May 19, 2005
Jabber me!
- Posted by Rob (#1) on May 19, 2005 12:00 CEST
Due to a problem with Kopete's passport handling, my MSN Messenger presence will be somewhat experimental for a while. I'm now using the MSN transport of my Jabber provider, jabber.org.uk, but I have no idea whether that will work reliably. I know I'm making this request in vain, but mates of mine should get started with Jabber so we can talk without any dependency on Microsoft services.
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We won at Agincourt, but we're losing the war
- Posted by Rob (#1) on May 19, 2005 16:09 CEST
Tony Blair is a wanker. Not because he had that evil shared vision with George Bush to get rid of Saddam Hussein's Baath regime, a move that already started a ripple of democratic reform in the Middle East a mere two years after the deed. Not at all.
Tony Blair is a wanker because he supports the European constitutional treaty, a bad deal for Britain. The treaty leaves Britain vulnerable to a greater risk than many a WMD:
During the negotiations the Government made 275 demands, but got only 27 of them. The Government said they were against giving up our veto over EU powers to determine prison sentences, but then later signed up anyway. The Government said that an EU foreign minister was "unacceptable", but then accepted it. The Government said that the EU Charter of Rights would be "no more binding than the Beano". But the Constitution would make the Charter legally binding and give EU judges more power over our economy and public services.
No wonder the French government describes the Constitution as, "the crowning of the French vision for Europe, against the Anglo-Saxon vision."
Things looked so well at Agincourt and now look where we're heading. Damn Joan of Arc, damn Giscard d'Estaing, damn Tony Blair, damn you all. I urge people: reclaim Britain's independence and vote no.
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Hoodies: for Robin Hood or hoodlums?
- Posted by Rob (#1) on May 19, 2005 18:33 CEST
Last week the Bluewater mall in Kent banned hoodies. Samizdata agreed with Mark Steyn, putting part of the blame in the government approach to citizens:
As Steyn points out, the habit of wearing hoods, large baseball caps and the like is in part a rebellion against the gazillions of CCTV cameras which now festoon so many of our town centres, shopping malls, public buildings and even, so the government hopes, our countryside. The law of Unintended Consequences, as Steyn says, applies. If you treat the populace like kids being minded by nannies in a creche, some of them will try and hide from nanny the best way they can.
I think this is a very thin argument though: people wear baseball caps and hoodies because they are fashion, not out of a rebellion against the nanny state. Sure, maybe some thugs do wear them for the reason of privacy, but that correlation is probably thinner than the one between being bald and supporting the Nazis.
Honestly, I don't even think of CCTV as a privacy concern nor do I think it is an initiative marking the existance of a Big Brother situation as portrayed in Will Smith blockbuster Enemy of the State. The true nanny state argument includes a government limiting freedom of citizens to protect them from themselves, not others. For instance a Working Time Directive sans opt-out, most drug laws and some of the new-fashioned legislation targetted at fast-food or soda drinks. Having a closed circuit camera looking at me in the pub scares me not: it doesn't prevent me from getting absolutely pissed, make a fool out of myself, kiss the wrong girl and then walk home (I drink but don't drive).
Hoodies are formal uniform wear at Coombeshead College, Newton Abbot, Devon and principal Richard Haight explains:
"It's the behaviour that's the problem, not the clothing," Mr Haigh said on Thursday.
He added: "If you know how young people's minds work, the best way of encouraging them to do something is to ban it.
"The more fuss we make about hoodies and baseball caps, the more a certain type of young person will want to wear them."
Now that's the proper way to defend hooded sweatshirts: simply say banning them is silly and counter-effective, without resorting to a nanny state argument that looks so fabricated that it removes credibility from the phrase for cases where government truly smothers.
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