Samizdata

“Why taxes are to blame for Britain’s fly-tipping problem” is the title of an article in today’s Telegraph by Patrick Galbraith, Environment Correspondent, and Emma Taggart, Economics Reporter, both of whom have earned their job titles. The standfirst is the title of this post. “Levy aimed at discouraging people from [X] is having the opposite effect” ought to win a National Recycling Award for ease of re-use. There’s a line that won’t be sent to landfill any time soon.

Chris Bayliss weighs up UK energy minister Ed Milliband and this politician’s determination to press on with his decarbonisation, Net Zero agenda, facts of reality be damned: Others may argue that making reasonable concessions to public opinion at critical moments might benefit the green agenda in the long run, by limiting the chances of a backlash. But climate politics lives or dies by its sense of inevitability.

“Sovereignty is not merely the technical possibility of making a one‑off decision. It is the continuing ability to govern yourself: to set and revise your own rules in the light of your own needs.

The suffering of Gaza, the death and destruction, is undeniable. You can make a legitimate criticism of Israel’s tactics in the conduct of the war. Many Jews around the world make exactly those critiques. But you cannot engage in such criticism legitimately if you do not also condemn the terrorism of October 7.

We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Brian Micklethwait’s blogs fell off the internet a while back for reasons not entirely clear. Some of them I had scraped, and have now republished on the Brian Micklethwait Archive site.

We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property.

There is far more heat energy in a swimming pool than in a pan of boiling water. You can boil an egg in the pan. You can’t boil an egg in the pool. And if you doubled the size of the pool, you’d double the energy available — and still have a cold, raw egg. This is not a riddle. It is the single most important concept in the energy debate, and almost nobody making energy policy understands it.

Dean Conway has written a supportive article for Central Bylines about the Green Party’s eye-catching new housing policy: Green Party policy ‘Abolish Landlords’: solving the housing crisis The Green Party’s ‘Abolish Landlords’ policy could end the housing crisis with a number of measures that will benefit tenants “The Private Rental Sector has failed”, reads the Green Party’s statement to ‘Abolish Landlords’ motion, adopted as party policy at October’s Green Party Conference.

“How to detoxify the immigration debate” is the title of an LSE (London School of Economics) blog post by Hana Kapetanovic. The debate is being dominated by the loudest voices with the most strongly held views; the voices of the majority aren’t being heard. It would sound very different if they were. In British Future’s segmentation of public attitudes to immigration, the biggest group by far is the “Balancer Middle”, with around half (49 per cent) of the public falling into this group.

There are some who maybe still claim Jeremy Corbyn isn’t an antisemite. But he is one of a number of openly antisemitic Jew haters sitting as MPs. That is frightening. Here he is spreading horrendous lies about Israel – lies of murder and organ removal.