Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Update!!! Change Your Blogrolls!!!

Owing to my recent decision to relocate to an area which made Tha London Diaries a misleading blog title, and also owing to my decisions with regard to how I'm going to develop my blogging, may I ask that you update your blogrolls to:

ProScrybed Thoughts - for political, sociological, media and other related discourse, and

InScrybed Lines - for literary, food, music, and other non-political stuff.

Posts on both are forthcoming. I'd say "watch this space," but that would be pointless - watch those spaces instead.

:-)

Note: This blog will feature no further posts. Thank you for reading, and I hope you continue to enjoy one or both of my new projects.

Personality Cluster

Your Personality Cluster is Extraverted Thinking

You are:

Organized and logical - a master at puzzles
Competitive in almost any arena of life
Objective when necessary, but passionate about what you truly love
Intolerant of excuses and incompetence



All of those statements apply to me, though there is obviusly more to the young Scrybe than merely the above. :-)

Monday, February 12, 2007

Comment of 2007

A few of you may remember that a while back I started a 'series' on here of the best comments by bloggers on another blogger's site. Hamer Shawcross was the inaugral winner. Unfortunately, it stalled due to a lack of interesting comments unearthed by Scrybe, and Scrybe's latent inability to spend hours searching for such comments. But now, thanks to ParburyPolitica's help, it is back!

May I give you...the Best Blogger's Comment On Another Blogger's Blog of 2007......

.As for Ivory Towers. Don't play that one with me man. You're as establishment as I am. Tory Agent, candidate, A-lister, Campaign Director to the Shadow Home Secretary, BBC commentator. You're hardly Chez Guevara are you?

Tom Watson. On Iain Dale's webshite.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Update of Paul Delaire Staines

211.17.152.64 - 211.17.152.71 (MGIFONDS) Staines,Paul Delaire; 3-4-2,Shibaura,Minato-ku,TOKYO 108-0023; JAPAN; JP


Class C Networks - Block 211.17

Thats all I'm aware of, would either Guido care to fill in the gaps?

Ahem. Interesting, eh?

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Paul Delaire Staines.

Interesting article here. I thought he was non-partisan? It seems not, if this potted history is anything to go by.

Hat tip to the other Guido for this one.....

Free Life No.37, September 2000 8
My parents sold the former family home recently and asked me,
not unreasonably, to clear out my books from their attic. I found
my copy of Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies,
from Plato to Marx, inside the cover my name was scrawled
together with the date 1980. I date my conversion to Libertarian-
ism from the day I put down that book.
I joined the Young Conservatives because they were the only
people around who were anti-Socialist or at least anti-Soviet.
This was the era of CND and I saw the key battle in terms of the
West versus Soviet expansionism. Simon Salzedo was chairman
of the local YCs and a Maggie-loving-Wet-hating typical young
Tory. He was bemused by this zealous anti-Communist in his
midst paraphrasing Popper and Hayek at cheese and wine
evenings – it would be a few years before he would lead the
charge at Oxford to dry out OUCA on a principled Libertarian
platform. He was elitist and it rubbed off on me, by the time I
got to sixth form I had revived the double barreled family name
that my father had let wither as a sixties Young Fabian. My
Anglo-Indian father obviously despaired of me hanging out with
Tory crypto-racists whom he loathed (although later he would
vote with his wallet for tax cuts and privatization giveaways).
By the time I was an undergraduate in the mid-eighties, having
joined the Federation of Conservative Students, and somehow
affecting to wear fake bow-ties and cheap suits (whilst endlessly
debating the merits of Anarcho-Capitalism versus Minimal
Statism), I had at last found a small number of like minded
souls. Marc Henri Glendenning the then national chairman of
FCS spoke a language I could understand - Thatcher on drugs.
Still it was right-wing anti-Communist, anti-Wet and mainly
reactionary. Battling in Student Unions to rename the “Mandela
Bar” the “Bruce Forsyth Bar”, arguing with CND feminists and
generally opposing the left wing campus establishment whilst in
the real world the Conservatives won elections by landslides and
the war of ideas. Only on campus were we a radical minority
and intentionally antagonistic, in fact so obnoxious that the
Conservative Party decided to close down its youth wings.
That antagonistic, sod you attitude continued after I failed to get
a degree (I was thrown out for being a right-wing pain in the
butt who was more interested in student politics than essays)
when I went to work in the various right-wing pressure groups
and think tanks that proliferated in the late eighties. The
deliberately provocative attitude still maintained – I never wore
a “Hang Mandela” badge but I hung out with people who did.
Why? What did we gain from doing so? Did we make ourselves
more popular by calling for the death of a man who was fighting
injustice by the only means available to him? Did this “shift the
parameters of debate” in our direction?
Did the over the top aggressiveness of the ultra-sound cadres
put people off the broader ideas and positive agenda of Libertar-
ianism? Clearly it galvanised our enemies against us in much the
same way that the crude jingoism of many Little Englanders puts
people off supporting a more liberal European ideal.
I am the first to admit that in the past when challenged on issues
I have been provocative – “What will Libertarianism do for the
homeless?” “Nothing”. Not a way to win friends and influence
people. I think its time for a more effective, kinder, gentler kind
of Libertarianism. Principled, but pragmatic. Selling out – no,
but better salesmanship certainly. A lot of us who came to
Libertarianism via FCS and student unions as well as battling in
the Conservative Party factions, have a take-no-prisoners
attitude that does not play out well to wider audiences. We are
unsympathetic and uncompromising, we are “Sound” but little
heard. What profiteth an idealogue if his ideology is ignored? Or
even if it is just rendered unpalatable.
Now there is a role for martyrs, who will brook no compromise.
Our editor is foremost amongst them, his voice can be heard in
the wind and on Radio 4, Radio 5, Talk Radio, Local Radio,
Daytime TV and innumerable late night discussion programmes
as well as Panorama, not counting a gross of websites, a million
e-mails and this journal. All power to his ‘puter.
Nevertheless Sean would never claim to be a politician or a
pragmatist – he is a prophet, a prophet of doom. The British live
in one of the richest and most free nations on earth, the way
Sean tells it we are about to be marked with the number of the
beast before Big Brother Blair carts us off to a New Education
Facility for a Better Britain. Sean believes that if we give them
a millimeter they will give us the kilometer.
I prefer to listen to Prodigy whilst Sean listens to Elgar but we
do both march to the same drumbeat. I prefer to focus on the
future and our successes. For instance the internet was devel-
oped by avowed Libertarians and brought to you by free
enterprise, the EU by statists and bureaucrats. We believe in
lower taxes, our opponents want your money, free enterprise
brought you the Lotus sports car, bureaucrats brought you
London Underground. What do you want?
Mere spin? It’s optimism versus pessimism. If pessimism
prevailed than we would still be sat shivering round a fire in a
cave, but an optimist went out and slaughtered a wooly mam-
moth. People want prosperity, we offer a path to prosperity,
whereas our opponents offer only reduced equality (“Ug I think
we are running out of wood”). Californian Libertarians offer an
optimistic manifesto of capitalist success for all, some British
Libertarians preach a fire and brimstone hell for all those who
don’t repent .
The glass is half full, so with liberty in our hearts let’s focus on
pragmatic politics and progress. Don’t whinge, win.
A Kinder, Gentler, Kind of Libertarianism:
Reflections on Two Decades of Libertarianism
Paul D. Staines

link for it is here: http://www.libertarian.co.uk/freelife/fl037.pdf

The esmteemed journal also has an amusing piece on Jack Straw. Enjoy!

Update: It seems this story has been picked up elsewhere.....

Barak Obama

His group on facebook has 249,128 members. That's an awful lot of people to have to hand. The discussion board for his group has over 1000 discussions and has only been recently started. Makes me laugh to think that we're trying to use online techniques such as this in the UK, when you think of the difference in engagement.

A few obvious observations.

(i) the u.s. is rather larger than the uk so a bigger raw number of group members would be expected.

(ii) the presidential race (even one which isn't happening ntil next year) is slightly more important than, say, who is going to be the next deputy of the labour party.

(iii) having a substantial number of people in a group helps to sustain that group and increase numbers further. think about it. I post on the board of a group with 100000 members. somebody will reply. logically, the more members a group has, the stuff gets posted and the more people respond, thus creating the image of a vibrant and popular group, thus attracting more members.

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Friday, February 09, 2007

Intelligent Post Alert!

Okay, I know I don't do this often. In fact, even this post amounts to nothing more than a shameless stealing back of my comment on someone else's blog. But I was impressed by the relative smarts displayed in my comment to feel it warranted reproducing here. And I quite like the blog it is on, so you can take this as being my feeble attempt to apologise for not linking with it by (hopefully) sending some traffic its way. To understand the context of my comment you'll have to read the original post anwyay. :-P

My comment:
"although, if we want to be accurate about it, that great reformist government of 1945 were merely implementing that great liberal reformist Beveridge's ideas from 1942. and while it ought to be noted that the NHS turned out much better under Labour than it would have done under the Conservatives (and the national government during the war did attempt to implement in 1944 but failed due to BMA rejection of their proposals), it was actually more Nye Bevan's strength and persistence which resulted in the NHS as we now know it to be. the rest of the government were less averse to introducing charges on 'extra' services - this was the premis pon which Bevan later resigned from Cabinet (although other factors did, arguably, play a role).

technically, historically, it can be claimed that Clarke is not, therefore, out ofsync with the party. I still think it a bit of a dumb comment though. Even from a purely economic point of view, intrducing charges for rehab will mean less people opt for it. they will likely then experience further medical ailments which the NHS will then have to remedy. in terms of admin staff coping with readmissions and the cost of providing this care, it seems plausible to suggest that Clarke's suggestion would be economically unjustifiable. That said, I've not researched the costs sufficiently to answer on this with any certainty, this is just my observation.

why i don't post like this on my own blog baffles me."

Now, I'm gonna go back to reading a brilliant essay by Jun'ichiro Tanasaki.

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Scrybe's Absence...Explained.

You may have noticed a, um, slight decline in posting frequency on this blog of late. I am a master of understatement, I know. But I've not been slacking...well, not that much.

(a) Just prior to Christmas I traversed the country to visit my old home oop nawf where, it seems, the internet has yet to be discovered. Thus I was without posting acces.

(b) I am relocating and, thus, tha london diaries is shortly going to be a somewhat misleading title.

How to solve this apparent dilemma? I am going to have two blogs which I never post on and which no one ever reads!

I decided that I'm going to use this one to post political stuff of a slightly higher standard than pervious posts may suggest that I am capable of, while the other blog will be more, ahem, literary. Unless I change my mind. Either way, hold on to your seats, I'm back onblog!

:-)

Update: I meant to add that Tim Ireland's blogging work is astonsihing. I shall link upon my return from Tesco's. I both wish I had the technical expertise to make his kind of posts and pray that I never p!$$ him off. Same goes for Unity over at Ministry of Truth (see blogroll). 'Nuff said.

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Friday, February 02, 2007

If Music be the Food of Love...

why was Jimi Hendrix so bloody skinny?

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