It has been said that El Comandante Salmond resoundingly won the debate with Alistair Darling. So hopefully this boosts the YES campaign to the point where English I mean Scottish independence takes wing like a majestic eagle, soaring aloft amidst a swirl of stirring bagpipe music (whereupon it can fly off and crash into the middle of Havana for all I care).
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August 26th, 2014 | 44 comments - (Comments are closed)
Minsk, Belarus. May 2014 Ah yes. Marc O’Polo, the great Irish explorer who travelled to and returned from the O’Rient. August 25th, 2014 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tim Newman has a great piece about the authorities shutting down McDonalds in Russia. The article is splendid on oh so many levels, such as:
Read the whole article. August 24th, 2014 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
(James Madison, writing as “Publius” in The Federalist No. 62) The current Code of Federal Regulations in the United states is pushing 180,000 pages, far more than any human can ever hope to read. The Federal Register, which reports on changes to these regulations, is now in the vicinity of 70,000 pages per year. This does not include, of course, the size of the underlying United States Code, or the size of many rules that are not part of the CFR, or the size of local and state laws and regulatory rules, or the mass of court rulings, administrative rulings, tax court rulings, IRS opinions and the like. August 23rd, 2014 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
Venezuela enters the high farce stage of its development.
Is this not truly epic? Is not socialism stranger than a chorus of singing penguins? August 23rd, 2014 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Whatever the “Yes” campaign claims, threatens or believes, here will be no currency union between an independent Scotland and the remainder of the United Kingdom. All three major parties plus UKIP have said this outright, and the voters back them up. Quite right too, unless you think it’s a good idea not to cancel the joint credit card after a bitter divorce. (Just a reminder: there almost certainly will not be any divorce. All the polls point to Scotland choosing to remain part of the UK.) So, to Plan B. Sterlingisation. The Guardian has flagged up a report from the Adam Smith Institute saying, correctly in my opinion, that for iScotland (OK, so I did just say “iScotland” and I cannot guarantee to resist “rUK” either – sue me) to use the pound as Panama uses the dollar would be the best option.
In contrast to the situation for a currency union, there would be nothing the rUK could do to stop iScotland simply deciding unilaterally to use the pound, and no reason it should care anyway. But it would be tough for Scotland at first. It would be the equivalent of gastric band surgery. No more splurging on welfare for you, Alba my love! This is not the first time the Adam Smith Institute has said something like this. My post on currency options for an independent Scotland back in February was partly inspired by an article by Dr Eamonn Butler of the ASI. You know my views. No surprise that a free-marketeer like me agrees with the ASI here. It does seem a little odd for the Yes campaign, spearheaded as it is by the Scottish National Party, backed by the Radical Independence Campaign and the National Collective, to be quite so keen. August 21st, 2014 | 63 comments - (Comments are closed)
I want one of these!!! August 21st, 2014 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is my take on the intended semiotics of the video showing the beheading of journalist James Foley, by a jihadi with a British accent:
This is my take on the perceived semiotics in the west:
The Islamic State just made it a trivial domestic political task for anyone who wants to support their enemies against them. Hamas fires rockets at Israel and then tries to get the IDF to kill some journalists in Gaza to win sympathy. The ‘Islamic State’ murders a journalist themselves by cutting his head off. I guess the ‘Islamic State’ cannot afford the same a PR advice that Hamas gets 😀 August 20th, 2014 | 71 comments - (Comments are closed)
I assume that any woman wearing the full Islamic garb is either a slave or a fanatic, but it was the diplomat “specialising in protocol” in the tradition of Kira Yoshinaka who first used force. She just asked him for directions. Admittedly, she was breaking the Belgian law against full face veils, but it is an unjust law of which she may not even have been aware. And somehow I don’t think all the British people cheering his vigilante enforcement of that law would be quite so keen on a random Belgian taking it upon themselves to impound some unfortunate British tourist’s car if he were to break, through ignorance or indifference, the Belgian law requiring a red warning triangle and a reflective waistcoat to be carried in a vehicle at all times. August 20th, 2014 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
Raúl Castro’s daughter first lawmaker to vote ‘no’ in Cuban parliament.
One pretty hand among that multitude could safely, even profitably, remain at rest. August 20th, 2014 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
To be fair, Swiss agriculture is so heavily subsidised that it makes French agriculture look like a bastion of free market liberalism. If the Swiss were to expand it further to make more exports to Russia, that would make them poorer, not richer. I see that places like Argentina do seem to be attempting to sell things to Russia in response to recent developments. I wish them luck with it, honestly, and this might be good for Russian consumers from the perspective that Argentina does, at least, produce some decent cheeses. On the other hand, doing business with Russia is likely to be a nightmare. Just like doing business with Argentina. Possibly they deserve each other. August 19th, 2014 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
This excellent report from what used to be Iraq and Syria highlights the very strange bedfellows that conflict in the Middle East can produce: It is great to see reportage like this as watching CNN or the BBC is often like watching a weird Disney version of reality. Highly recommended. August 19th, 2014 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
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