Marcel Theroux's Russian train adventure (Part two)

Marcel Theroux's Russian train adventure (Part two)

Video link here.

[friday quiz] five fiendish questions

1. Air Force One is the US President's plane. What is Marine One?

2. Eboracum is the Roman name for which city?

3. Which is the closest answer to how long the Hundred Years War lasted - 97 years, 100 years, 115 years or 147 years?

4. The Condor Legion was the name of the German air force flying for Franco's nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War. What was the name of the Irish volunteers on Franco's side?

5. What was the name of Haile Selassie before he was crowned in 1930?

Answers

A helicopter, York, 115 years, The Blue Shirts founded by former Irish president William Cosgrave and commanded by Gen. Eoin O'Duffy, Ras Tafari

[niagara] un du meilleur jamais

I know many of you aren't going to like this and will politely click over it. However, check the interview for a few seconds and you'll get the general idea:



Now try the first song. Disclaimer: nourishing obscurity accepts no responsibility if your computer screen melts:



OK - if you're still here, you might like to try a minute each of these.





As you've probably gathered, I really like this group and a French friend of mine put me onto them. When we say "group", it's actually Muriel Moreno of course. I wonder why my FF liked them then. Maybe for the music?

A #Silly Week post under the "Different" category

[weekend poll] hot babes of the world

1. Reincarnation

2. What Hormones Can Do

3. Baby Mopper

4. You Show Me Yours ...

5. Gordo's IT Supremo

6. Wotchoolookinateh

7. Mr. Eugenides

8. Forty Winks

9. Flower of Scotland

10. Rubber Ducky

Vote for any three babes, as usual. Good luck!
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[liberty] meet the new boss - same as the old boss

In the middle of a British summer [is it different to anyone else's summer?], politics is a bore. We should be concentrating on beaches, travel and good things.

It's a time which does allow for thinking on freedom as well and how best to define and then to ensure it. Xlbrl says here:

I shall tell you what the Libertarian Party is in America. Not libertarianism, mind you; I have no idea exactly what that is, because ten libertarians will have ten ideas of what it means. The party is a collection of good people, wackers, right and left wing, dogs and cats sleeping together.

I see in England even conservative-libertarians conflate or confuse anachy and liberty. It is the lack of liberty (and the demands liberty makes upon individuals) that makes anarchy. The very choas of liberty discovers order through the disipline of consequences.

If we can excuse Xlbrl's great faux pas in referring to England instead of Britain, [which is more than Gordon Brown will do - we need an American to do it for us :)], it's clear we need greater clarity on where we're headed with this liberty thing.

Moggs Tigerpaw says:

"If you just talk about Libertarian ideas, without labels, they are broadly sympathetic. The existing parties don't mind the confusion and probably like it."

Xlbrl goes on:

Hayek: 'The astonishing fact revealed by economics and biology is that order generated without design can far outstrip plans men consciously contrive.'

Liberty is not freedom. Liberty first contrains with rules of conduct; it is then men have far greater opportunity in everything.

LPUK, interestingly, states:

A Key Principle — The Rule of Law

The concept of The Rule of Law is distinct from just being ruled by laws. The Rule of Law encompasses, amongst other things, property rights, due process, equality and transparency. It also includes the notion that there should be as few laws as possible, and that those that do exist should be simple, clear and predictable in their application.

That's stated right at the top, the first key point. Therefore, my post, between a rock and a hard place, is shown to be wide of the mark in its title, if not in its concerns. So Labour, in its mania for surrounding us with over 3000 new laws is actually removing freedom and contributing to lawlessness in society at the same time.

I could never trust a party which obfuscates on what it is trying to achieve. Labour is clear in its mind but hides its true agenda from the people [look at their policy document - not the manifesto which says something altogether different and obfuscates]. When you go to the official manifesto, its prime directive is never mentioned once.

Only when you persist and go into the section on How We Work do you see it in all its infamy - it's about "democratic" socialism, the greatest oxymoron in history.

The Tories, my own lot, have a leader who makes policy on the run to suit the circumstances of the day. This is deeply disappointing because we, the people, deserve a firm, clear commitment to liberty, starting with getting out of the EU while remaining in a loose trade partnership with Europe, the original idea.

In the end, what everyone is looking for, except the politicians, is for the elected reps to show a bit of spine and to carry out their campaign promises. What we are looking for is that our elected reps are just that - elected representatives of us, the people. Not our rulers, not our enslavers - they have zero mandate to inform us of what we should be doing and to send the police in when we don't do it.

In all countries these days, the most fundamental principle of all - representative government - is not even on the table for discussion at governmental level. Perhaps we should stop calling them "government" and call them "the tail which wags the dog".

Cherie says:

The way it stands at the moment the three main parties offer pretty much the same thing in different ways. The electorate have got disengaged which is why there is a low turnout at elections.

They have indeed become disengaged but at the same time angry, if that is possible, resigned to "all politicians being corrupt".

On the other hand, Lord T says:

The people are just not ready for Libertarianism. It’s not that they don’t want it it is just that they are scared of letting go of what they know as they see Libertarianism as Anarchy and are frightened ... I think that the first step is to prioritise the easy wins.

Tell plod to go back to Peelian Principles, and sack every outreach coordinator, special advisor for short people, long people etc. and social worker in there. Then, get every Quango to list what they do on an A4 piece of paper including costs and benefits. If it is not of benefit to the people abolish it and put the people on the dole.

Tell everyone on the dole that payments will stop dead in five years, remove carefully selected hurdles to businesses. And so on…. up to a nice point where we have restored all our freedoms, defined a constitution(or something) and brought control to our society.

Ian Parker-Joseph, the LPUK leader, refers obliquely to the rule of law when he comments about their site:

Moving forward, the blog will be under the watchful eye of an editor and a new set of posting guidelines, with an editorial veto on anything which we consider damaging to LPUK.

Guthrum refers to benefits coming out in the next few weeks.

Somewhere, in all of this, needs to be thrashed out where Freedom [or the right to breathe] meets Law, where the freedom to set up a business and flourish meets being bought out or squeezed out by a monopoly like Walmart, say. It's where the power of the bankers and great monopolies to reorder society meets the freedom to operate economically in the first place.

I fear we can't get anywhere when the facts are laid out, as in this post and people do one of two things - either look away or else read it and refuse to admit what the august personages and the historical record clearly state. What chance is there when people operate like that? The old "let's not worry about facts - I know what I want to believe" principle. The flat denial principle.

I also fear we can't escape laws in order to achieve the balance, to keep the gang of malcontents at bay and to keep power out of their grasping hands. When someone sweeps in with "brand new ideas", sweeping everything away, all the corruption etc., how can the principles in the LPUK rule of law then be protected?

The malcontents play on people's desire for new ideas, new products and so politics has been turned into a product too. There's no Labour but Nu-Labour. We say we won't get fooled again but we do - over and over.

"And the men who spurred us on, sit in judgement of our wrong. Change it had to come - we knew it all along; we were liberated from the fall that's all but the world looks just the same and history ain't changed.

There's nothing in the street looks any different to me and the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye and the parting on the left is now the parting on the right and the beards have all grown longer overnight. Meet the new boss - same as the old boss."

That has to have been one of the best Who performances ever, especially given their age.

When we can define where freedom and liberty meet the rule of law, when we can maybe change "libertarian" for "freedom with responsibility", when we can block the subterfuge of those, like Labour and Obama's backers, who would destroy us, we might get somewhere.

[alcoholic] when is the line crossed

Delighted to be stealing my blogfriend Nikita's pic today - please follow the link and read about help for alcoholics.

Alcohol - we were having a discussion yesterday about when a person can be defined as an alcoholic. I said it's the first time you drink alone at home. My friend's mother said that her husband has a nightcap some nights.

Well, OK, so do I like nightcaps and a glass or four of wine at the meal, if I can ever remember to do it and there's no alcohol in the house just now for economic reasons so I have tea instead. Maybe an alcoholic is one who has started to use the euphemisms, e.g. for "medicinal purposes", "just a drop please" or whatever.

We all know what the full-blown alcoholic is like - the denials, the regression and so on. We know what a person who can take it or leave it is. Somewhere in the middle though is the beginnings of the alcoholic.

And what of the teenage binge-drinkers? Perfectly OK?

[bannister of fire] now even your gran can do it

[This post is part of #Silly Week.]

[sixteen vestal virgins] leaving for the coast

You know why. Sorry to slavishly follow the MSM.

[libertarian party] between a rock and a hard place

Pic - thank you, Tamsinmorse

If you manage to get through this post, please don't miss reading the comments section.

There is the issue of the posts on this blog and comment has been made that the long posts, the serious posts, are buried in the flurry of other, shorter posts and no one can either find them nor wants to read them when they're found.

That's fair and though it shouldn't affect RSS reading anyway, I'm going to try to put the main post up late morning and put two either side - that's the theory. In line with this theory, it would be nice to get some feedback on the problems of the Libertarian Party of the UK and I'd rather not wait until tomorrow morning.

It begins with the Norwich North result and Chloe. My political stance, for those who don't know and who care, is here.

The moniker - Libertarian Party

1. There was Chloe herself and her victory, that was a factor in itself. A pretty child, however talented, will tend to score, these days, over either a seasoned campaigner or an up and coming young man, particularly given the general disgust in the country over career politicians.

2. LPUK is new - hell, look how long it's taken the UKIP.

3. People simply don't want serious politics in the middle of a British summer and LPUK is a serious party, with serious policies. People have had a gutful of seriousness.

4. Then comes a deeper problem - the name. Just because we in the sphere tend to be mainly libertarian in outlook, my mate puts the point of view that none of us are truly libertarian. If we were, we'd have a Wyatt Earp attitude to law enforcement and a dog eat dog situation in everyday life, again a bit like the image of the old American wild west.

It doesn't wash in Britain and while most of us in the sphere are comfortable with the libertarian tag because we understand it and are politically aware, I saw people uptown today who simply would have fear at the idea of libertarians running round with their anarchy. It would take an education campaign to overcome the baggage of the libertarian tag, not unlike "libertine".

That LPUK are nothing to do with that image - they failed to get across to Norwich North. Pretty politics is another thing - we can't get enough of that e.g. Caroline Flint before shooting her self in the foot.

5. Americans might go for a Libertarian Party - the Brits won't.

The brouhaha over the Rogue Commenter at the LPUK site

No other party has this problem - only LPUK, by virtue of its name and policies. Labour would just delete the comment by the Rogue Commenter and that would be that. Ditto the Tories:

1. The Libertarian Party is ... well ... libertarian.

Do they delete an attack on Chloe Smith or do they not? I believe that Ian and the big wigs simply have it in the offing pending discussion - this is my surmise. By all reports, the comment was way OTT and worse than that - unprofessional and yet, can they afford to alienate their base by deleting?

2. It wasn't the points made about Ms Smith, which might well or might not have been true. It wasn't the hard hitting nature of the comment. It was the ad hominem, which most serious bloggers nowadays refuse to countenance but even more - LPUK, before a general election, cannot afford not to appear to be a serious party.

It was the aggression, the less than gentlemanly language and the way it zeroed straight in on a personal level.

I'm fisking the whole time on this blog. I've said some terrible things about the bankers, the gay mafia, the feminazis and the EU. Yet I don't do it with a potential and rival candidate for a position.

Therefore, LPUK is between a rock and a hard place.

Citizen's basic income

This is a bit O/T but I'd like to know where LPUK stand on this, without having to wade through pages of policy to find it. It might anger Ian [Parker-Joseph] but it's possibly the attitude of many people as well and therefore is a factor which needs to be taken into account - the realpolitik of short available time and short attention spans.

Let me tell you what Citizen's Basic Income would do for me. If it was at £7000, then that would cover my basics. Therefore that fear factor disappears and I can go out, take greater risks and seek for what I'd like to do far more assertively. I really would. Knowing I could always fall back on the CBI, I'd go for it as if there were no tomorrow. I believe I'd succeed.

It's not perfect but it's a start and if fazed in, would help with the welfare state problem we currently have.

At the risk of lengthening this post, Lord T has taken up the libertarian question on his blog and it really deserves a read. There are issues IMHO which need addressing before next May and it's LPUK's best chance. Here are some issues to address:

1. Why, IMO, [are] the people ... just not ready for Libertarianism? It’s not that they don’t want it it is just that they are scared of letting go of what they know as they see Libertarianism as Anarchy and are frightened.

2. I [Lord T] am a UK Libertarian yet even I wonder what is going to happen. It is clear we can’t go from a welfare state to a Libertarian paradise overnight and yet nobody is clear on what it means to them if the voted in the LPUK.

3. Until Libertarians actually look at the process and define the first term in office, what it will do, what changes it will make during its first, and potentially only, term then people will be unsure, better the devil you know than this bunch who want to remove all controls and bring anarchy to the UK. We need Libertarian Lite which is a stepping stone on the way.

4. I think that the first step is to prioritise the easy wins, Tell plod to go back to Peelian Principles, and sack every outreach coordinator, special advisor for short people, long people etc. and social worker in there. Then, get every Quango to list what they do on an A4 piece of paper including costs and benefits.

Do read the whole thing, as the tone is clearly that of not wanting this golden opportunity missed.
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[sportsmanship] the elusive quality which droppeth from heaven

There are many incidents of bad sportsmanship and many others which one side considers so but the other side thinks is legit. In both situations below, a case can be made that the perpetrators acted within the rules as far as they understood them, especially in the top one where the organizers failed to write it into the tournament rules.

Similar, with Leg Theory, no one was expecting it and so, technically, it was fine. Yet everyone knew it wasn't fine. Sportsmanship - that elusive quality. Just looking over these vids again now, two things struck me. One was how Richie Benaud savages the Australians at th end of the top vid and the other how the British government got involved in the dispute and threatened, in depression 1932 remember, to call in Australia's loans.

[This post is part of #Silly Week.]