The BBC (caveat more or less everyone), found by Boing Boing, alleges that the Dutch government is trying to prevent a (literally) born sailor from sailing.

Once upon a time Miss Dekker’s ambition would have been celebrated (despite having been to the Netherlands I can’t remember whether or not they ever had an equivalent of Blue Peter) as evidence of the ‘diversity’ of the numerous accomplishments demonstrated by the Dutch.

Unfortunately nowadays ‘diversity’ no longer has this meaning; it now appears to mean ‘everyone, regardless of their race, colour, creed, gender alignment, etc. etc. ad naus being hammered down flush into identical, politically-determined cultural forms from which individual ambition and achievement are rigorously excluded’.

I suppose that though we British, groaning under the same yoke, might sympathise with Miss Dekker personally, we might comfort ourselves with the thought that at least now she won’t be sailing up the Medway and burning the Royal Navy in its own dockyard, like one of her predecessors.

It is reported by Boing Boing that in the Netherlands, where most drugs are legal, there is now such a shortage of criminals that the choice has arisen between closing down some prisons and making their staff redundant, or importing criminals from Belgium to keep the system going.

Silly Cloggies! Don’t they know that the way to keep the security-state in business is to make everything illegal, and the entire country into a vast prison?

I don’t often remark upon the goings-on in foreign countries but this one (h/t Boing Boing) got me going, to be quite honest.

Robert Graves records in his autobiography that during the First World War the Germans, outraged at British atrocities, made a number of complaints to the referees.

They considered that .303 Ball Mk.VII was atrocious, because its projectile ‘tended to turn on striking’.

They also (as a warrior nation with rather firm ideas about who was and was not entitled to participate in a war between gentlemen) objected to the British and French use of what they called ’semi-civilised troops’. The Ghurkas (with the British) and the Turcos (with the French) were naturally singled out as being savages unfit to fight civilised Germans; rather more surprising was the inclusion in the list of the Canadians and Australians, who were, according to Graves, addicted to the habit of murdering prisoners.

Of course Australians no longer do this, and nowadays, it seems, indulge their taste for atrocity solely by inflicting upon a hapless planet some of the worst television broadcasting that it has ever seen.

The Canadians, on the other hand, appear to miss the old days. They have yet to be reported as having driven prisoners into a cellar, dropping a live grenade into the pocket of each as they did so.

But seizing, handcuffing, imprisoning and substantially fining someone for failing instantly to obey the arbitrary and trivial command of a ‘police officer’ (in this case, to hold on to an escalator handrail) is certainly a step towards restoring the Canadian reputation established during WWI.

Before anyone starts bitching about the hypocritical, ungrateful, po-faced, holier-than-thou British, I feel that while on the subject of atrocities we should remember Lord Kitchener, who is often credited with having invented the term ‘concentration camp’, and of course Oliver Cromwell, who, however apposite his remarks to Parliament may now seem, is often credited, certainly in Ireland, with having invented the concept, if not the name, of ‘genocide’.

Nick M, at Counting Cats, on the USA:

I have been back to the USA of course because it’s ace. I know loads of folks who haven’t. Why?

I have been to the USA once, on business. Even if I were still allowed to fly I doubt that I’d ever go back there.

The plane took off from Heathrow only after an extended Asian family (of about 30 people) had been stopped from conducting an improvised cooking session in the gangways using Camping Gaz cookers. As soon as the wheels were off the ground, they were at it again. Eventually they were replete, and stopped cooking; however, the remainder of the interminable flight was pre-empted by a Modern Mother from Australia, who cooed lovingly as her repellent child rushed around the interior of the aircraft screaming, and trying to force open the doors and smash the windows. On final approach to New York the headphones were playing The Ride of the Valkyries, presumably to accustom one to the personal style of the airport goons.

Having been admitted to the country with only modest harrassment and bullying (the result of having the business cards of the very large American corporation for which I worked) I then had to catch an internal flight. This involved being sent repeatedly fom one end to the other of an airport, the charming 1950s architecture of which was not improved by having in it perhaps 300 times the number of people for which it had been designed. The temperature and humidity were extremely high. Whenever I arrived at a desk, they would send me back to a different desk at the other end of the airport, against the clock, but not before saying, in every case, “Hey, take it easy! You gonna have a heart attack.” It was like that scene in one of Clint Eastwood’s films where he is running all over San Francisco looking for ringing phone boxes. While scurrying about, dragging my belongings, I could not help noticing that everyone in New York makes as much noise as they can, all the time, many having been issued with noisemakers for the purpose.

Eventually I managed to penetrate the interior of one of the famous but tiny buildings, in which a number of people were standing in litter-bins frantically auctioning tickets, and contrived to board what I was lucky enough to discover was the right aircraft.

Unfortunately it didn’t go anywhere. They were waiting for a takeoff slot. So we waited, and waited, as the aircraft internal temperature inexorably approached the engine exhaust temperature. During this time the chief stewardess mercilessly nagged the captain through the open cockpit door. After some hours of this the captain received clearance to taxi, provided that he made it snappy, and the aircraft set off hastily towards the runway, back-seat driven by the chief stewardess (“Hey, that’s the wrong way! We always turn left here! Goddammit, will you look where you’re going? You nearly hit that guy!”).

This flight was brief, the destination being relatively close to New York, which was fortunate owing to much of the fuel having already been expended. Even so, it was pitch dark by the time we got there.

The regional airport was, essentially, closed. I was supposed to collect a hire car. There was still someone at the car hire office, just shutting the place up. Of course the paperwork had been buggered up and had to be straightened out. Eventually I traipsed out with bag and baggage into the pouring rain, to locate in an unlit and unpaved parking lot a thing called a Mercury Cougar, which seemed to resemble in some ways a Scorpio Granada.

Unfortunately it wasn’t a Granada. It refused to go when asked to go, on the grounds (it appeared) that it was unhappy about things to do with safety. I had to get in and out of it several times; it didn’t, for example, like to have the key put in the ignition before it detected someone sitting on the driver’s seat. Finally, by now soaking wet and shivering, I persuaded it of my bona fides.

Immediately, with a dramatic ringing of an hitherto unheard bell, an electric motor wrapped a seat belt around my neck. Had I been any taller, I should have been unable to escape it, and would probably have been garrotted on the spot.

Eventually (being an experienced technical author) I managed to establish the correct operating sequence and got the doors shut, the seat belt on and the engine started. At this point I just sat in the thing for ten minutes, smoking a cigarette. To my surprise the car (which forbade smoking) failed to detect this; had it not done so I imagine that I should have been immediately ejected.

There remained only the task of driving the thing some tens of miles, on the wrong side of the road, in the middle of the night, and in a heavy rainstorm, to find the appointed hotel. The car handled, as we British automotive constructors precisely put it, ‘like a hot prick in a tub of lard’. Its substantial engine had been so crippled by emissions-control equipment that its performance suggested something more like a Trabant. The only thing that worked well was the air-conditioning, which I couldn’t switch off.

Having, thanks no doubt to British Army training, succeeded in orienteering my way to the hotel, I was greeted by a bored, gum-chewing youth who told me that I need not have walked half a mile around the enormous place in the rain because there was a side door right next to the parking lot and to the elevator which came up alongside my room. I had taken it for a fire-escape. “Oh, it is,” he said.

It was now the early hours of the morning. Before collapsing I decided that I had to have a shower. The shower was a masterpiece of American plumbing and its controls resembled those of a moderately sized ocean liner’s engine-room. None was marked in any way.

Selecting a control at random, I operated it, and was immediately felled by jets of superheated steam.

The following day, for therapeutic reasons, I decided to have a pizza. I am very fond of pizza. There was a pizza place across the road from the hotel. I walked over there. This was a mistake.

The first thing they said to me, as soon as I walked in through the door, was “Where’s your car?”

“Over there,” I said, pointing at it in the hotel’s parking lot on the other side of the road. “As you can see, it is less far to walk from the hotel to here than it is from the hotel to the car.”

“You’re English.”

“There appears to be nothing that I can conceal from you. I have come here out of London, England in order to sample what I am reliably informed are the finest pizzas on the eastern seaboard of the Continental United States.”

So I got a pizza, which I carried back in triumph to the hotel; indeed, on returning to the place some days later, it turned out that they had believed every word and supposed me to be some sort of international investigator from the pizza equivalent of the Guide Michelin. The head of the whole pizza chain had turned up, and was all over me like a cheap suit. I got lots of pizza-related cultural artefacts (fridge magnets and whatnot).

Despite the tactical success at the pizza joint the remainder of the operation was uniformly depressing.

The purpose of my presence was highly technical and was to do with the compatibility of television and computer processes. Essentially they told me that what I had already done was technically impossible and that the only way for the project to proceed was for them to take it over and do it all again, their way. I omitted this item from my report and my own unit eventually proceeded to achieve the technical objective at a very greatly reduced cost.

Having, as they supposed, dissuaded me from doing in a fortnight with one British fellow in a Hut what could so easily be done in a couple of years by a thousand Americans in a vast, windowless, airconditioned building (the building in question was, like those in the airport, famous; it was the original and definitive case of ‘Sick Building Syndrome’), they proceeded to train me in the operation of some software which was long obsolete before the project ever started; I never really did find out why.

And the car continued to be itself. One day, on one of the endless straight rural roads, I opened it right up to see what I could get out of it. About 56mph seemed to be its lot. At this point I passed a parked car marked ‘State Troopers’, with a fellow in a cowboy hat asleep inside it. The following morning another car, marked ‘Sherriff’, was waiting outside the hotel, and followed me to work.

Constant recollection of various POW films maintained what was left of my morale until the glorious day when I was allowed to go home. I gladly returned the gutless car to the airport, and rejoiced in what seemed to be a relatively easy connecting flight to New York. The plane back to Heathrow even took off on time.

Then, somewhere over the Atlantic, it started turning right.

It kept on doing this. Lacking a compass, I couldn’t be sure, but I got the impression that if the captain carried on at this rate we’d be landing somewhere in Africa. Then I noticed that the chap in the seat next to me was sweating copiously, and praying.

I looked out of the window. To the left of the aircraft was a body of cloud. One does not usually see clouds of this form rising as far as the stratosphere, let alone well above an aircraft at FL300+. After some detective work around the aeroplane (which contained several more praying people) it emerged that this was the last flight of the day to have left New York to attempt to traverse ‘the steep Atlantick stream’, owing to the presence of an hurricane. Apparently the only reason it had taken off at all was that Tina Turner, the famous American chanteuse, was in first class and the entire media pack was waiting for her at Heathrow, and the airline didn’t want to look silly by cancelling her flight.

The diversion around the hurricane took some time, so on arriving over the UK the captain elected to fly at a fine speed in the nap of the earth all the way to Heathrow, where the aircraft landed, still at a fine speed, without any of the usual aerial ballet. The other passengers were praying, still, this time thanking various deities for their deliverance from the hurricane; I, on the other hand, being familiar with the geography of Heathrow and the mechanical laws of Sir Isaac Newton, was offering suggestions such as “Brakes? Brakes! Reverse thrust, for crying out loud!”. The aeroplane eventually shuddered to a halt a few feet from the end of the runway, and with some difficulty turned sharply to taxi away.

At the terminal we were all made to stay in the aeroplane until Ms. Turner and her entourage had left the airport, whereupon we were released.

Having at last recovered my luggage, all that remained was to get through Customs. I had nothing to declare. Accordingly I dragged my kit into the appropriate customs hall, at the far end of which were two specimens of the typical British Customs Officer: little round fellows of a vaguely naval aspect, with looks on their faces of permanent suspicion.

However, they took one look at me and waved me through. As I staggered out, one of them smiled, and essayed a small mock-salute.

I am, of course, prepared to accept that people have been to the USA and have been quite happy with the result, but would prefer on the whole not to repeat the experiment myself.

I am somewhat puzzled by the highly enthusiastic response of The Lone Voice to this story from the Telegraph, about a young woman who appears likely to be shot in Laos for heroin smuggling.

Most people of a libertarian persuasion seem to be of the view that the main problem with ‘illegal drugs’ is not their druggishness but their illegality. The legalisation of all drugs is part of most Libertarian manifestos, with a view to restoring individual responsibility, restoring the status quo ante Margaret Thatcher in re medical support for addicts, and eliminating both the undesirable organised-crime element in drug supply and the undesirable totalitarian element in the police force so clearly symbiotic therewith.

Does The Lone Voice feel that this commitment is an improper one, and that in fact ‘drugs’ (meaning, of course, only those which are not profited from by multinationals nor taxed by governments) should remain illegal? If so, why?

Libertarian opinion differs somewhat on the subject of judicial capital punishment; I am against it, myself, for a number of reasons, though I would allow the individual the use of lethal force in self-defence.

Does The Lone Voice believe (as it would seem) that capital punishment is appropriate in this case? If so, why? Would this view also apply to any cases under British jurisdiction? If so, which?

Libertarian opinion hardly differs at all about Communism, regarding it more or less uniformly as a bad thing. The government of Laos is an unregenerate Communist tyranny, of the usual South-East Asian kind, run by sinister little generals in hats too large for them.

Does The Lone Voice see the government of Laos as being in such a position as to be deserving of support? If so, why?

I hold no brief for the unfortunate (if extremely foolish) young woman involved in this regrettable case, considering that anyone who ever travels to a country like Laos has only themselves to blame for the consequences.

However, I am, as I said before, puzzled at what seems to be The Lone Voice’s joy and rapture at the prospect of this silly girl being killed by Communists for doing something (if, indeed, she did) which many people of our general outlook believe shouldn’t be illegal at all.

Does The Lone Voice’s enthusiasm for the executions of young women also extend to this one? If not, why not?

Complete poppycock, politely commented upon by Trixy.

How on earth can Turkey be in the EU?

It isn’t in Europe.

It is (except for a small piece) in Asia Minor.

Even I know that.

(Of course I am aware that if Turkey were allowed to join the EU then in one magical moment Britain would cease to have the EU’s worst human-rights record, which doubtless explains the enthusiasm of successive British governments for the project)

Turkey; snapping Turks; Turkish bath; Turkish slippers; turning Turk; Turkish tobacco; turkey; turkeys; turkey-shoot; Turkish pipe; rondo alla Turca; token Turks; terrorist Turks; terrorist Bulgars; terrorist Greeks; token Greeks; Balkan tokens; Serbs; Sarajevo; terrorists again; will this do?

An essay on the evasion of bureaucracy, found by Bodwyn Wook:

This is the story of how I successfully refused to accept a Social Security Number for my child.

I simply said “no.”

Ah, the USA! Whatever one may think of its recent experiments (which seem, regrettably, likely to continue) with totalitarianism, it is evidently still possible there to do this sort of thing and get away with it.

In this country they simply take the baby’s DNA anyway, and call it by whatsoever numbers they choose; and if one says anything about it they call the goons and start shrieking about ‘verbal abuse’.

Notwithstanding the results of previous Anglo-American competitions, I reckon our American cousins are going to have to be a bit more 100% about it to beat us at the new 21st-century sport of ’sovietisation’.

According to The Independent:

British soldiers are engaged in “a surreal mini civil war” with growing numbers of home-grown jihadists who have travelled to Afghanistan to support the Taliban… Interceptions of Taliban communications have shown that British jihadists – some “speaking with West Midlands accents” – are active in Helmand and other parts of southern Afghanistan… the numbers of young British Muslims, “seemingly committed jihadists”, travelling abroad to commit extremist violence has been rising…

It would appear that people from the UK, evidently disappointed that they do not live in a mediaeval theocracy, are prepared to go overseas to fight for such a theocracy against all comers.

Would it not be rather easier, and perhaps cheaper, for everybody if the people who do want to live in such a society, and who is to criticise their individual choice, were all to go to Afghanistan, where they would doubtless be happier, and the Army were to return to Aldershot (etc.)?

If I thought that there was a country anywhere on Earth in which a truly Libertarian government obtained then, believe me, notwithstanding my distaste for foreign climes and the usually poisonous beasties therein to be discovered, the Villa Underclass would be on the market right now.

I certainly wouldn’t stay here and indulge in any more possibly futile attempts to change the Democratic Republic of Great Britain into something resembling what I’d call a civilised country.

So why don’t we retrieve what’s left of the Army (including my unfortunate cousin, who seems increasingly likely to die of old age in the theatre of war) and spend a tiny fraction of what is currently being spent on the absurdly nonsensical and militarily worthless Afghan ‘campaign’ instead on free air fares, hotels, taxis and whatnot for the disaffected Muslim youth of the West Midlands to indulge in a bit of what when I was a lad was called ‘voluntary service overseas’?

All they would have to do would be to give an undertaking to require their host government (in the majority of cases this would be the Taliban) to make similar provisions in respect of their return when ‘their Services were no longer Required’.

I am so boring that I have always rather admired the Swiss. Their political system, while not perfect, is better than ours. They are, as someone pointed out ages ago, wholly armed, and quite free. They don’t join anything, mind their own business, are prepared to be perfectly bloody to anyone who invades them, and make lots of nice kit (Nagras and Sigs and all that stuff).

Their banking system has also seemed over the years to be a rather more stable and reliable one than our own.

Wrong.

Ian Parker-Joseph asks:

Reasonable then one would think to ask the question, is this global recession really just down to greedy bankers?

My guess would be: no.

This guess is based not on economic erudition but upon a suspicious and devious nature and a reluctance to accept the present government’s position on the usual basis of proof-by-repetitive-assertion, straw-men, stalking-horses, show-trials, etc.

Obliged also to Bodwyn Wook for the plug. Amplifying on the point, he concludes:

Not even murder in however large amounts is any excuse whatsoever for wrecking the Constitution of the United States.

With which I am sure those who drafted the said Constitution would agree, as might those who defended their right to have the said Constitution against the British (who were in the wrong throughout, with only the excuse of having a King who was a Mad Man and therefore a Bad Thing [vide Sellar & Yeatman: 1066 And All That], and those who have defended it since.

That the USA, of all places, should allow its natural enthusiasm for being Top Nation [Sellar & Yeatman, op.cit.] to involve it in the tacky and predictable global-totalitarian-dystopian science-fiction scenario contest in which it is currently neck and neck with its old enemies in Europe is, frankly, surprising.