A hundred years since its founding, the Beeb is now a preachy HR department with some TV channels attached.
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Vigilantism is defined as “the act of preventing, investigating and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without legal authority” by the various dictionaries. I’d say that the critical part of that is the “…without legal authority” bit. If you act without being formally “legal”, yet have the support of the community? You’ve essentially supplanted or replaced a dysfunctional existing system or mechanism. To me, that’s the essence of vigilantism, when you consider it as a social phenomenon: Members of the citizenry acting without duly constituted and conferred authority, yet still within the bounds of the community values and mores. The existing system is in grave danger of convincing a significant fraction of the community that they are justified in not taking things through the duly constituted system of legalisms and legalities. After a certain inflection point, when a critical mass is reached, then the whole thing gets junked and we start over with a new paradigm, one that I suspect is going to be a lot less concerned with the welfare of the criminal, and far more concerned with putting an end to their activities. Whereupon the usual bleeding hearts will whine and complain about the inhumanity of it all, completely oblivious to their own complicity with destroying the current system in the name of “criminal rights”. It will be interesting to see what develops, that’s for sure. I doubt that anyone will like it, especially at first. – Commenter Kirk October 14th, 2022 | 67 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Tory MPs didn’t even give Truss a chance. They cut her off at the knees before she could even begin. They don’t appear to want to be in power any more. October 5th, 2022 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
I don’t want to take anything away from the Ukrainians, who have basically been a banner case of military transformation, but it also helps that the Russians are really, really bad at the whole “war that involves more than bombing hospitals” thing. October 3rd, 2022 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
The alternative to the cornering and humiliation of Russia would be for the United States and its allies to halt or reduce their aid to Ukraine and impose a stalemate. But that would mean delivering a victory to Russia, because it would still hold more Ukrainian territory than it did in 2014 and would have gone unpunished for pervasive war crimes, including mass murder. In three or four years, a rearmed Russia, thirsting for revenge for the losses and defeats it has suffered, would do the same thing again, and against a dispirited Ukraine. If that were to happen, it would be an utter disaster for American policy and Western security. Such an imposed stalemate would be profoundly immoral, but equally to the point, it would be profoundly stupid. So this is indeed a dangerous moment, because Putin will inevitably find himself humiliated and cornered and may very well look for a way to lash out. But as General James Wolfe said before storming the heights of Quebec in 1759, war is an option of difficulties. The error lies in thinking that one can titrate the application of violence to achieve exquisitely precise results. To the extent that the West continues to attempt to do so, it will merely ensure more mass graves like those of Bucha and Izyum, and more soldiers lying limbless or in the burn wards of Ukrainian military hospitals. So now, as ever, Churchill’s observation that courage is the virtue that makes all others possible holds, particularly for the leaders of the embattled West. Zelensky could not put it better himself. September 26th, 2022 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
I know enough gay people – progs, conservatives, libertarians even – to know that most of them wanted to be accepted and unashamed and then ignored (as if they were just . . . normal!) and are now looking on in horror as “their” movement gets co-opted and taken over by people with huge latex breasts with protruding nipples claiming the right to teach in high schools while dressed that way. That’s not what they wanted, and we made it possible by forcing them to construct a movement when we wouldn’t accept them living quietly amongst us. It was the existence of that ready-built movement that the latex breast people could take over that made all of this fun possible. I can almost feel Andrew Sullivan’s pain when he says we should remove the “G” and maybe the “L” from the new LGBT movement. – Bobby B September 24th, 2022 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
Heaven forbid trying increase gas supplies in a time of gas shortage. Amazing how many greens seem to have a convergence of interests with nice Mr. Putin. Funny that. – Perry de Havilland on the opposition to fracking in UK from the usual suspects. September 23rd, 2022 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
We live in a world where Ricky Gervais and JK Rowling are, to everyone’s surprise, not least their own, ‘right-wing’. The supposed rule breakers such as Frankie Boyle, Nish Kumar and Stewart Lee are crushingly orthodox. Roger Waters has a portfolio of crankery going back decades but remains unbesmirched, whereas a single tweet from Winston Marshall saw him exiled from polite society. (As I write, it seems Craig L Potter of the band Elbow might be heading the same way, merely for daring to criticise trans charity Mermaids.) – Gareth Roberts (£) September 20th, 2022 | 48 comments - (Comments are closed)
“German Galushchenko, the minister of energy, told the YES conference that Ukraine could potentially supply two gigawatts of power to the EU right now, but was being prevented from doing so by bureaucratic obstacles on the European side” – Niall Ferguson (not that one, the other one). September 17th, 2022 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Masks are like the Hindenburg line. You can retreat from all the rest, but if you ever give up the masks, the crisis is over for good. The longer the masks can be maintained, the longer they needn‘t admit defeat. – Burnley Beresford (£), commenting on an article about the persistent mask lunacy in Germany (not £). September 12th, 2022 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
There can be no more questions from Western partner nations about the long-term prospects for Ukrainian victory on the battlefield, which should help guarantee continued large-scale support throughout what promises to be a very economically and politically difficult winter. The Ukrainian government will now be highly resilient against Russian-sponsored narratives that aim to undermine domestic faith in the Zelenskyy government. The Russian leadership faces very awkward questions about its decision to invade and the way in which it has conducted the war, and has also lost any semblance of a bargaining position to try and compel Ukraine to negotiate a settlement that might lock in some Russian gains. Finally, in the all-important area of morale, Ukrainian troops will be going into a muddy, cold and dangerous winter period with confidence in their victory, while Russian troops must come to terms with a major defeat, heavy losses, the obvious lies of their leaders, and fear of what the Spring will bring. September 11th, 2022 | 52 comments - (Comments are closed)
The arc of history is long, and it bends toward reality becoming an Onion meme from a decade ago. I was going to tag this as “humour” but decided it was too accurate for that… September 7th, 2022 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
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