Robocops come to Lisbon for Euro 2004
The Sun on 24 May published two pictures that made my 59 year old blood run cold. What looked like a Hollywood publicity still showed Portuguese police in full body armour with grenade launchers and flash-ball guns that fire rubber bullets preparing for a football competition. An adjacent picture showed cavalry officers for all the world like medieval samurai warriors. The message delivered by an officer was: “Do not try to fight us, just run.”
Is this the brave new Europe utilizing the fictional Detroit model of social control?
EU ends UK summer railway timetables
I’m one of those people who have never really been able to understand railway timetables. By the time I have worked out where the route is in the booklet and laboriously worked out when to travel I realise that I’m looking at the weekend timetable or vice versa, whatever gives me the wrong times.
Now, thanks to a European Union directive my task becomes even more difficult. Britain’s rail network must drop its twice a year summer and winter timetables that come out in May and November in favour of a single timetable coming out in December to ensure closer alignment of rail services across Europe.
This may be quite useful for Europe but we of course are not in Europe. This is another example of subsidiarity. We do what we are told.
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Friday, May 14, 2004
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Atlas still shrugging
"We're after power and we mean it. there's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. one declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Now that's the system Mr Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it you'll be much easier to deal with." So said Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein to Hank Rearden the inventor and developer of the fabulous Reardon metal in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas shrugged.
Panned by the critics [and by many of those who love the book] it has remained in continuous print since its publication in 1957 and continues to have an enormous impact upon the political convictions of anti socialists.
When I first read its thousand pages or so I believed that Ms Rand had gone over the top in the description of her imagined America but with every year that passes her passionate message of individual freedom under threat becomes more relevant.
I'm moved to record this because of an article by Paul Craig Roberts entitled Bill Gates meets Hank Rearden
"We're after power and we mean it. there's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. one declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Now that's the system Mr Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it you'll be much easier to deal with." So said Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein to Hank Rearden the inventor and developer of the fabulous Reardon metal in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas shrugged.
Panned by the critics [and by many of those who love the book] it has remained in continuous print since its publication in 1957 and continues to have an enormous impact upon the political convictions of anti socialists.
When I first read its thousand pages or so I believed that Ms Rand had gone over the top in the description of her imagined America but with every year that passes her passionate message of individual freedom under threat becomes more relevant.
I'm moved to record this because of an article by Paul Craig Roberts entitled Bill Gates meets Hank Rearden
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