It seems I’m a bore.
Gus of 1820 has decided that this blog is a yawnfest and will be removed from his blogroll. I can’t say I blame him.
I just don’t seem to have the energy and vigour for political blogging that I once had. I spend most of my day getting stressed out that I […]
I’ve read a few pieces about the late William F. Buckley. But this one by Bill Kristol caused me to bristle…
In my high school yearbook (Collegiate School, class of 1970), there’s a photo of me wearing a political button. (Everyone did in those days. I wasn’t that much dorkier than everyone else.) The button said, […]
I was never really an Old Labour man. I became politicised during the age of Blair. Although, more than most, I have always been interested and aware of politics and current affairs. I remember a Christmas quiz at school and I was the only one (we were about 14 or 15-years old) who knew that […]
Martin Kettle has an arresting piece in today’s Guardian. He argues that while the left often cry that the political parties are all now centrist ones, and that every candidate is essentially the same, in reality they are markedly different, offering very different choices. He goes on to explain how this complaint has dogged liberalism […]
Quick. I haven’t got long.
Have you read Simon Jenkins’ Op-Ed in today’s Sunday Times?
Jenkins’ - normally - really bugs me, but this is a very well thought-out piece and is very close to my thoughts on the relationship between the West and Islam.
And in a Murdoch paper too!
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Tom Miller’s NewerLabour blog is one of my favourite leftie blogs. Today he has posted Johan Hari’s criticism of Nick Cohen and his What’s Left? polemic (my thoughts: here and here).
Money shot:
Just as Cohen blames Keynes for the problems stemming from Versailles, when all he did was accurately predict its effects, so he blames liberals […]
Libertarians see government as an enemy: alien and oppressive. Somalia in the 1990’s is a good example of a country without a government, funny they haven’t moved there.
Always wonderfully readable, it’s one of life’s pains that Tom blogs so infrequently. But hey, quality over quantity, eh?
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We all have strange talents that are pretty useless for the most part, and one of mine is an uncanny flair for catching flies. Whether you think that is pointless or just gross is immaterial, the point is, at this particular task, I’m probably better than you. So there.
When I was a teenager […]
I have just read Nick Cohen’s piece from Sunday’s Observer.
Nick is predictably using his column to continue to plug his new book attack the left for their temerity to oppose the ‘disastrous war’ in Iraq - the one Nick himself supported.
Yet, in fairness, Cohen does make some valid points. We do suffer […]
There are two excellent pieces on CiF today. Former MP, David Marquand, gives the best summary yet of the shortcomings and missed opportunities of the Age of Blair, and Geoffrey Wheatcroft discusses the coming ‘Perfect Storm’ that will bring the final collapse of Neoconservatism.
David Marquand: Blair’s moral interventionism has often been compared […]
It has to be one of the biggest fabrications we instil into our children: what do you want to be when you grow up?†We ask this question relentlessly, and one can be sure that grandparents and loving aunts will similarly badger our offspring about their future plans too.
But when do we […]
Richard has dug out George Orwell’s “STATEMENT ON ‘NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR” and has reproduced it for your consumption, here.
Good work Richard. A true gem.
Bleary eyed, I awoke this morning in my hotel room to the mutterings of the Today programme on Radio Four.
Now regular listeners of the programme will be aware that a short section of the schedule is given over to religious speakers. The section is called Thought for the Day, and pious individuals […]
Libertarians and net-heads should take a look at Hari Kunzru’s excellent essay from yesterday’s Guardian Review supplement: -
Unfortunately for us complacent beneficiaries of liberal democracy there is a paradox at work here. The technologies that provide anonymity to the paedophile and the terrorist also protect the political dissident and the whistle-blower. The encryption that impedes […]
