I am becoming steadily more convinced that Mrs. May doesn’t believe anything, but by God she doesn’t believe it fiercely!
– Michael Jennings, of this and other parishes
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Emma Watson’s Convenient Feminism: Talk A Good Game In Between “Yoohoo, CHECK OUT MY TITS!” – Amy Alkon, also penning a real contender of best blog post article title of the year 😉 March 2nd, 2017 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Can the NHS be reformed? Or is major surgery required if it is to make a full recovery? We need to come up with much more radical reform than is currently being proposed. And if that doesn’t work, instead of accepting the somewhat back-to-front NHS version of TINA – in which we are told that there is no alternative to a welfare-state-era model of provision frankly unfit for the 21st century – we need to replace the NHS with something better. According to Benedict Spence, writing in the Independent, ‘pretty much all of our European counterparts have a universal and in many cases much better healthcare system than the UK – and, horror of horrors, most European healthcare is what we would call “privatised”’. The UK is unusual among developing nations, he says, whose often social-insurance-based systems often perform better than ours (for example, in cancer survival rates). And yet, the defenders of the NHS remain ‘aggressively insular’. February 27th, 2017 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
D’Souza thanked the academy for the prizes, saying in a recorded message that “being dissed by you guys, this is absolutely fantastic. “My audience loves the fact that you hate me.” “The reason you are giving it to me is because you’re very upset Trump won. “You’ve never got over it, you probably never will.” – Dinesh D’Souza, as quoted in the Guardian upon getting four Razzies for the worst film of the year for his Hillary Clinton exposé. This approach works equally well against both left and right. February 26th, 2017 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Besides Yiannopoulos, his publishers and the concept of free speech, the big winners here are booksellers. Or at least you’d think so. But at least one Sydney outlet says it won’t stock Dangerous. “Jon Page, owner of Pages & Pages, Mosman, and the online retailer Boomerang Books, became the first Australian bookseller to publicly declare he would not stock or promote the book by Yiannopoulos,” The Sydney Morning Herald reported last week, describing the author as “a mouthpiece of the hard right and a figure of controversy for his anti-immigration, anti-Islam stand”. Page is wrong to say he won’t promote Yiannopoulos’s book. He just did, and in a far more effective way than if he’d filled his bookstore’s windows with Milo posters. By taking his anti-free speech stand, Page ensured further publicity for Yiannopoulos and even more sales — but Page won’t be sharing in the profits. February 20th, 2017 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
But I would respectfully take issue with the last line, which although undeniably correct, suggests a counterproductive sentiment. Nevertheless I strongly suspect from Longrider’s choice of title, Much Joy, that in truth he also sees this much as I do. And thus, although I am an atheist myself, this second quotation actually expresses my view rather well.
Welcome to the fight, Trevor, let me show you to your place on the forward edge of the battle area. February 19th, 2017 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
The result of [the ‘sharing economy] is that in many ways, private tech companies have ended subsidising new forms of public services, for the public good. That ought to make them the darlings of the Left. Yet unfortunately, the Left just can’t rid itself of its urge to regulate, legislate and tax. And in their efforts to thwart consumer freedom, they have a useful ally in the shape of a legal framework which was developed for the analogue age. Uber, for example, is the poster child of the sharing economy. Yet 2017 is make or break year for its European ambitions – and at its core is an age-old political battle of Left versus Right. This battle isn’t on the streets of San Francisco or London; Uber has already won over consumers. Instead, the fight is moving to a soulless courtroom in Luxembourg. The question is whether the company is a technology or a transport company; and the answer is incredibly complex. February 18th, 2017 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is what the British Broadcasting Corporation considers front page news.
What the BBC doesn’t tell us is that this “most trusted figure” saw his career come to an abrupt end when he was fired by CBS for pushing a false story about George W. Bush’s service record which was based on forged documents. February 16th, 2017 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
Comedy might not be Loach’s forte. But there is splendid unintentional humour in this class warrior standing up at a dinner sponsored by large corporations to denounce the Government that pays him so handsomely to keep churning out his Marxist drivel. February 15th, 2017 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
After the Commons vote on Brexit last week, Davis is said to have approached Abbott for a kiss but apparently she told him to ‘fuck off’. Later, a Tory friend texted Davis to ask him about the incident. Davis texted back saying he hadn’t tried to kiss Abbott, and wouldn’t, because ‘I am not blind’. In short, he thinks Abbott is unattractive. It is tempting at this point to say Davis’s text messages were crude. But that would be wrong, because the fact is they’re none of our business. He did not say these things for public consumption. It was an off-hand, matey remark of the kind all of us make via text or email or WhatsApp or whatever. That Davis’s texts were leaked doesn’t make it okay to haul him over the coals for them, to insist that he retract and repent, because this still amounts to shaming someone for a private conversation. The correct response to the texts would be to say: ‘This is not my concern. People can think and say whatever they like in private.’ Of course that hasn’t been the response, because such is the stifling intensity of the ‘You Can’t Say That!’ culture that now even private speech, glorified thoughts in essence, are considered fair game by the shut-it-down brigade. February 14th, 2017 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The really big point is that far from being a tumultuous, cacophonic, unstable, firecracker of a polity, Brexit Britain is starting to feel like a relative island of calm, more at ease with itself than it has been for many years, led by a sort of 1950s Prime Minister, who is nearly 20 points ahead in the polls. The spotlight of worry has swivelled round elsewhere, to Greece, France and to the United States. If Brexit is a revolution, it is so far turning out to be a very British and incremental one, lacking in violence or upset. More tea, vicar?” Indeed. What has struck me about some on the Remain side, for example, is that they have been coming across as a bid mad, unpleasant or utopian, not the other side. It is pretty hard to portray the likes of David Davis, for example, as fire-eating radicals when the eurozone, for example, is and remains an economic clusterfuck of Old Testament proportions. February 13th, 2017 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
The post-Brexit, post-Trump political battle lines seem to have been drawn up between “globalism” (a dysphemism for “free trade”) and protectionism (the second most stupid idea in history, but still dangerously powerful among the economically illiterate). So it looks like we are heading back toward the old Conservative/TruLib™ or Tory/Whig divide. The realignment will take some time to work its way through though. Firstly, for example, the Labour Party (which still commands some tribal loyalty) needs to finish committing suicide. The new players, UKIP and the Greens, need to submit to the discipline of the electoral market and form consistent political and economic stances. In many ways I am as politically homeless in this new alignment as I was in the old. UKIP is a strong candidate to replace the Labour Party, but I don’t fit in its mercantilist ranks. The only thing I have in common with the Trumps, Farages and LePens of this world is that I believe when someone does move to another culture they should assimilate. I see NO obligation on a host country to modify any legal, ethical, religious, social or political norms to make new arrivals feel at home. I don’t feel comfortable in the Conservative Party either. It’s more inclined towards free markets than the other contenders but it’s socially illiberal and inclined to build a scarily powerful state. Yes, it’s a successful fighting force with a lot of internal cohesion and has been much strengthened as an electoral machine now that Brexit has removed the only threat to its unity. There is no doubt it will be one of the potential parties of government in the new order and in the likes of Dan Hannan it has some sound thinkers but I hunger for a home that is more authentically TruLib™ February 12th, 2017 | 55 comments - (Comments are closed)
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