Zam Zam

BBC News reports

Holy drinking water contaminated with arsenic is being sold illegally to Muslims by UK shops, the BBC has found.

Who would do this? The BNP?

No, it seems this is a case of Muslims poisoning Muslims:

Zam Zam water is taken from a well in Mecca and is considered sacred to Muslims, but samples from the source suggested it held dangerous chemicals.
...
A BBC investigation discovered Zam Zam water was being sold by Muslim bookshops in Wandsworth, south-west London, and Upton Park, east London, as well as in Luton, Bedfordshire.

So was it a case of unscrupulous Muslims deceiving their pious brethren?

The BBC asked a pilgrim to take samples from taps which were linked to the Zam Zam well and to buy bottles on sale in Mecca, to compare the water on sale illegally with the genuine source.

These showed high levels of nitrate and potentially harmful bacteria, and traces of arsenic at three times the permitted maximum level, just like the illegal water which was purchased in the UK.

So Allah has allowed his holy well to supply toxic water?

He must be displeased with somebody.

It isn't British

I think this must be the most absurd argument of the entire campaign:


Like most British libertarians and conservatives, and unlike many Progressives, I actually like Britain. We British have given a great deal to the world, and we have much to be proud of. But it's nonsense to suggest that we can't occasionally benefit from foreign inventions. Indeed, we have a long history of taking the best from around the world, and making it our own.

Now, I'm not sure who first dreamt up AV, and whether it is superior to FPTP is a matter for debate, but I can't think of a worse reason to reject it than "It isn't British".

The most right-wing, ideological government?

Seen on LabourList:

The Liberal Democrats could have left the Conservatives to govern alone, but instead they are supporting the most right-wing, ideological government in the post-war era, making cuts that even Thatcher would have flinched from.

It would be interesting to consider the arguments for and against this assertion.

Of course, I don't see anything wrong with being ideological. What are the alternatives? Government by focus group? Pandering to special interests? Backroom deals for political expediency? Consideration of personal advantage? Legislation on a whim? On balance, I quite like the idea of our parliamentary representatives operating according to a coherent set of principles, clearly articulated and consistently applied. I don't see much evidence of that happening, though, in the Conservative Party or any other.

As for right-wing, I've remarked many times that the conventional left-right political spectrum is pretty worthless. Nowhere is this more obvious than at the 'far-right', which is supposedly a bit further to the right than Thatcher, and yet occupied by the the BNP, whose 2010 manifesto supports

the National Health Service, "free university education to deserving students", reversal of rail privatization, nationalization of telecommunications infrastructure, and "an active protectionist policy" for British industry.

Do Labour and Lib Dem supporters even know what they mean when they say 'right-wing', or do they just see it as a generic term of derision?

In any case, those like Norman Tebbit who self-identify as traditional, right-wing conservatives, don't think very much of the modern Conservative Party under Cameron, and despite the odd bit of promising talk, I haven't seen many decisive actions from this government that are worth celebrating. The centrist, high-taxing, deficit-spending, inflationist, politically-correct, liberal interventionist, CO2-obsessed, nannying, bureaucratic, Europhile mush of Party X seems alive and well to me.

I'd be delighted to be proved wrong.

And "cuts that even Thatcher would have flinched from"? So far, overall, there haven't been any cuts. Much depends on the extent to which we are robbed by inflation, but these projections show real-terms spending settling by 2015 at a level higher than 2009.

Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two

Regular readers will know that I am a huge fan of the first video from the EconStories duo, John Papola and Russ Roberts, entitled "Fear the Boom and Bust".

For those who haven't already seen (via The Cobden Centre or elsewhere), Roberts & Papola have produced a second video, "Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two", which is just as brilliant as the first.

Share and Enjoy!

The New Deal in Old Rome

Westminster's most promising MP has highlighted what sounds like a very promising book: The New Deal in Old Rome, by H.J. Haskell (first published in 1939).

From the conclusion:

The fundamental modern social problem is the problem that Rome failed to solve. It is the problem of building a unified yet free society, with decent minimum standards of living. A society so intelligently and justly organized that there is no menacing submerged class. A society that provides reasonable incentives for the free rise of a general staff of competent managers whose ranks are always open to fresh recruits. A society that develops a social pressure under which leaders accept an enlightened and far-sighted view of their responsibilities. This is the society which the long experience of Rome sets as a goal before the modern world.

72 years later, we still haven't cracked it.

The book is available for free as a PDF.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Regular readers may recall my post about Apple Mail exploding.

It's happened a couple of times since, and each time is as infuriating as the last.

What pushed me over the edge, though, was Mail's stubborn refusal to subscribe to the shared folders at my work. Depending on the value chosen for the IMAP Path Prefix, I either got all of the shared folders, or none. I had little choice but to opt for the former, but as the company archives have grown, this has meant storing about 60GB worth of messages under ~/Library/Mail. With various other demands on my meagre old 128GB disk, I decided I'd had enough (my upcoming MacBook Pro will only have a 256GB SSD; I couldn't justify the cost of the 512GB one).



So, years after I gleefully abandoned it, I've reluctantly returned to Mozilla Thunderbird, now at version 3.1. It's improved a lot since version 1, but it's still pretty hateful. I'm compiling a proper list of Pros & Cons, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to cope with the sheer ugliness of it. Take this dialog, for example:

Ghastly.

I can only hope that the version of Mail included with Lion will be a suitable replacement.

How many murders before life means life?

BBC News reports:

A killer who beat an 89-year-old woman to death, 25 years after being jailed for life for another murder, has been told he will never leave prison.

Odd job man George Norman Johnson, 47, killed Florence May Habesch as she made him a cup of tea in Rhyl, Denbighshire.
...
The court heard Johnson and another man launched a "sustained and savage attack" with knives and a pair of scissors in 1986, killing a man in his own home for £3.

In October 1986 he admitted murder, and was jailed for life with a direction that he should serve at least 17 years.

He was released on 20 March, 2006, on the condition he took regular drugs and alcohol tests.

He was recalled in January 2007 after a positive test, but was released in December 2007.

By October 2010, he had admitted that he was taking drugs, and later admitted he was taking heroin daily and owed money to local drug dealers.

The BBC article doesn't say what crimes Johnson was convicted of before his first murder in 1986, but it's clear that he should never have been released. I find it absurd that he was "jailed for life with a direction that he should serve at least 17 years". Life should mean life. If it had, the life of Mrs Habesch would have been saved.

I'm sure some readers of this story will take it as evidence for the evils of drugs, but in my experience drugs don't turn good men bad. At worst, they remove the already-low inhibitions of already-disturbed individuals. In any case, the answer is to hold people fully to account for their actions. If you choose to get high, you must accept responsibility for the things you do in that state.

Instead, our perverted 'justice' system will continue to let a dangerous minority roam free to rob, rape, and kill, while needlessly criminalising the actions of countless decent people who use prohibited substances for self-medication or harmless recreation.