German Socialist Eurocrat warns of Eco-totalitarianism

“I am increasingly worried by all kinds of legislation regulating peoples’ private lives. We are approaching a situation which I would call lifestyle-regulation. I don’t want a society in which people are told how to live in the privacy of their own homes. We must not deprive our citizens of the right to make independent decisions.” (source)

These are the words of Günther Verheugen,

Wise words on a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

A quote of the year? This comment was posted by some Ian B in the telegraph online comments section and deserves more attention than one of many comments usually gets:

“

“The aim of our British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities will be to clarify and explain the obligations which come with rights,“

Dear God Jack, you don’t understand what a Right is, do you? Go and read the American Constitution and Bill Of Rights. The rights they enshrine are *protection FROM government* not *responsibilities TO government*. Can you not see the difference?

Alan Duncan on Gordon Brown

“Brown is the man who has doubled your council tax and destroyed your pension. He is the man who has presided over a collapse in saving and an astronomical explosion in personal debt. He is the man whose budgets - don’t ever forget - were an exercise in trickery and deceit. He is the man who will tax anything that moves and everything that doesn’t. He is the man who has turned the Revenue & Customs into a force for nasty aggression.

Quote of the Day

“Pledge allegiance to Britain?! What the flying fuck is going on? This is the mindset of Nazi Germany, of Iran, of the inbred, half witted parts of the USA. Not Britain. People here should be free to be patriotic. Or free to be not patriotic. Because they are free. Pledging allegiance to the country does not make people patriotic, and actually should make us feel there is less to love about this country.”

The nameless one, in his beautifully poetic analysis of Cameron’s national service proposal.

Did Paxman really mean this?

In his recent MacTaggart lecture, Jeremy Paxman raised a highly pertinent question:

“The idea of a tax on the ownership of a television belongs in the 1950’s. Why not tax people for owning a washing machine to fund the manufacture of Persil?” (source)

That almost sounds like a rejection of the license fee racket. Did Paxman mean it?

Quote of the Day

“The diversity ideologues deserve whatever ill tidings they get. They’re the ones who weren’t willing to persuade the public of diversity’s merits, preferring to turn “diversity” into a political and legal hammer to compel compliance. The conversions were forced conversions. As always, with politics comes pushback. And it never stops.”

Daniel Henninger

Quote of the day

“Comrades: All this waffle against executions and death sentences – that’s just rubbish. Execute, without a court verdict if necessary.” (source)

Erich Mielke – former head of East Germany’s secret police.

Deborah Lipstadt on Banning Holocaust Dennial

As the EU is set to outlaw ‘Holocaust dennial’, Deborah Lipstadt is speaking out for freedom of speech. She has made this point before, but her current article in sp!ked goes beyond short remarks on censorship and offers a principled defence of freedom of expression.

“I shudder at the thought that politicians might be given the power to legislate history. They can hardly fix the potholes in our streets. How can we expect them to decide what is the proper version of history?” (Source)

Merkel knows best?

We all heard about female intuition. The Economist may have discovered a new phenomenon: European intuition, although they attribute it to superior hearing. Europe’s superhuman Führers know what ordinary citizens want and ordinary citizens want the EU Constitution –under a new name and without referendum:

“Europe’s leaders are united around two incompatible beliefs. The first is that their citizens want them to press ahead with reviving most or all of the constitution. The second is that it is wisest to avoid testing this thesis by asking those citizens directly in new referendums.” (source)

O’Reilly’s Code

A Little Fable

“Alas,” said the mouse, “the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.”

“You only need to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.

(Franz Kafka)

Tim O’Reilly has drafted a code of conduct he would like bloggers to adopt and has also designed a very ugly batch he would like them to display. Most of what needs to be said about this has been said (see here and here). I will add just one point:

O’Reilly links his code with a badge labelled ‘civility enforced’. My concern is that once one such code is widely accepted, others will follow. Those others may not be voluntary any longer –at least not in all countries. Add the fact that some people have very odd ideas of what constitutes civility, then imagine where this may lead…