A media that taught us to mock authority and culture was unprepared for the day when the audience would mock their authority and their culture.
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At the end of a week in which the House of Commons defeated Labour’s draconian plans to regulate the press, the Tories revealed their own draconian plans to regulate the internet. The culture secretary, Matt Hancock, has pledged to make Britain ‘the safest place in the world’ to be online. But when the world’s ‘safest’ internet is currently found in China, where access is heavily restricted and censored by the state, it becomes clear how terrifying the government’s safety agenda really could be. May 27th, 2018 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The cliche is that it’s personal ambition that propels most politicians. Unfortunately, I think it’s true, at least for the biggest of them. What really drives most of them round the twist is not failing to get their policies enacted, but their ascent up the greasy pole being blocked. May 26th, 2018 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
May 23rd, 2018 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
It occurs to me that there’s perhaps a bit of guilt on show here. You see those pregnant 11 year olds in Telford got in that state because the local authorities, in fear of being branded racist and/or islamophobic, allowed gangs of muslim men to groom and abuse white girls for decades and ignored complaints/reports etc. that this was occurring. One suspects that the distaste for this joke is more because it reminds readers of the failures of the Briitsh Nanny state than actual concern for the feelings of 11 year old sex abuse victims. If the writer actually cared about the victims and subsequent potential victims he’d be campaigning to have the perpetrators and their facilitators in the police/social services punished appropriately (personally I think being nailed to a fence by their genitals would be reasonable, but I can see that people might differ on the details. Would a bit of rebar up the bum be better? both? or how about the traditional English hanging, drawing and quartering?) so as to make clear that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable in the UK. May 21st, 2018 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
What I found particularly annoying is the degree to which certain commentators elevated the importance of Meghan Markle’s race. If the media hadn’t told me, and then not shut up about it for months, I would never have guessed she was the daughter of a black mother and white father. To me, she looks as much Spanish, or Italian, or Lebanese as mixed-race American. Her mother simply looks like someone you’d see shopping in Marks & Spencers in Croydon, so why anyone should think her race is even worth mentioning I don’t know. Actually, I do: it’s because some people think race is the be-all and end-all (e.g. David Lammy, Katie Hopkins), and others simply took the opportunity to virtue-signal, rubbing people’s nose in the subject of immigration. May 20th, 2018 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am a radical on Town & Country planning as on other economic issues. I would abolish it. To me it is offensive that the value of a man’s land is stripped from him by laws that deny him the right to put it to its highest and best use without grovelling to local politicians in thrall to his envious neighbours. May 17th, 2018 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
As any big city mobster will tell you, shaking down small businesses for protection money is a profitable line of work. The government gets into the same lines as the mob and every branch of government wants a piece of the action until the number of permits gets to the point that no one can afford the protection. Mobsters understand this, which is why they have a capo who decides which local thugs get to shake down which neighbourhoods. Sometimes the Capo is referred to as “Mr. Mayor”. May 16th, 2018 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’m not making up my mind on Gaza until I’ve heard what Gary Lineker and Lily Allen think – Jeremy Briar offers sage words of advice 😜 May 15th, 2018 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
May 13th, 2018 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
There’s a conference called A Conservative Renaissance in London today. But I can’t see any renaissance coming to pass whilst the Conservative party is being run by a Blairite. Before any rebirth, the old order needs to die, and given the dire threats we face from within, we don’t have the luxury of waiting for them to literally pop their clogs, so the sooner the better. – A certain Tory who shall not be named. I made a somewhat similar observation myself. May 12th, 2018 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
For [Adam] Smith, the dangers that natural liberty faces are not a result of the system of free markets itself, but of mankind’s flawed human nature, particularly the desire of those he called “merchants and manufacturers” (among others) to “rig the system.” The natural desire to “better our condition” motivates us to strive for a better life. This is the motivation that underlies the success of natural liberty. Yet this same natural desire also leads to cronyism and corruption when businesses and others use the power of government to procure for themselves “systems either of preference or of restraint.” In so doing, Smith said, they impose an “absurd tax on the rest of their fellow citizens,” retard growth, and increase inequality. As a result, free markets are neither self-establishing, nor self-sustaining. If we are to continue to reap the very real benefits of natural liberty, we must be prepared to defend against cronyism. May 10th, 2018 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
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