“We have not built a reservoir since 1992 or a nuclear power station since 1995, but we have raised the age of using sunbeds to 18.”
– Daniel Hannan, Sunday Telegraph.
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September 29th, 2024 | 15 comments
 May have overstated. May!?!
Well, it’s a start, I suppose. However, they massively overstated it, destroyed our liberties and economy on the basis of their own panic and inability to follow through with a sensible, rational plan that was already in place. No may about it. They did. Big time and every one of the fuckers should be doing jail time including Half-Whitty. – Longrider, with whom I agree entirely. There needs to be professional, financial and social consequences or nothing changes. Instead, the fuckers get knighted. September 27th, 2024 | 32 comments
“The overwhelming issue facing any UK government is: what do we stop doing? Governments over the last two decades have pretended, especially to the media, that they can tackle any issue that either journalists or lobby groups get upset about. But that is patently impossible within current resources of people, money & political consent. So what we get are nonsensical policies to ban advertising of junk food – who knows what that is – online or before the evening watershed. Lots of people waste large amounts of time trying to write & interpret regulations that won’t have the slightest impact on the problem of obesity. This is all displacement activity for governments that are clueless and utterly incompetent. All the signs are that the current government is doomed, both because of the personality of the Prime Minister and the inclinations of his party. Since any outsider can read the runes, why would anyone commit money to underpin economic growth without being heavily bribed to do so? That is not a viable way of turning the ship of state around.” I came across this comment, by a person called Gordon Hughes, in the UnHerd website article about the problems in the current UK government civil service machine and cabinet structure, and thought it was so good and incisive that I take the liberty of sharing it here. Also, I take the opportunity for another plug for a book that I recommend about how a lot of people, including journalists, seem to think about everything today: Seeing Like A State, by James C Scott. September 16th, 2024 | 15 comments
And yet, once the Ukrainians ask for long-range fires, all of a sudden their importance is downgraded and minimized. There was the widely-discussed piece in Foreign Affairs by Stephen Biddle which recently kick-started this argument—but it was an argument greatly amplified by Defense Secretary Austin a few days ago. During the latest Ramstein meeting of Ukraine’s partners in Germany Austin basically said long-range fires were not that important. As it was relayed by PBS: After the talks, Austin pushed back on the idea that long-range strikes would be a game-changer. “I don’t believe one capability is going to be decisive and I stand by that comment,” Austin said. The Ukrainians have other means to strike long-range targets, he said. Its hard to know what to make of that extraordinary claim. Is he saying that the US Army’s number 1 priority for modernization is not nearly that important? That would be bold of him—but more than likely he is desperately searching around for an argument because he knows just how important long-range fires are in war. – Phillips P. OBrien (£) September 10th, 2024 | 33 comments
“If free speech is a measure of a modern liberal democracy, Brazil is in trouble. A crackdown on expression and the denial of due process for those who contradict the state’s version of the truth dates back to 2020. Now it’s getting worse.” – Mary Anastasia O’Grady Wall Street Journal ($). She is writing about Brazil’s clampdown on X, aka Twitter. Other countries are looking and watching. September 9th, 2024 | 4 comments
I went into my segment with Tucker intent on challenging him if the opportunity presented itself, but the brief appearance focused on my Oxford speech and ended before I’d had the chance to raise my objections to his coverage of the war in Ukraine. His producer WhatsApped me immediately after to congratulate me on the appearance with the invitation to “Please come back soon!”. ”Here is my moment”, I naively thought to myself and replied with the offer to come back and discuss my disagreements with Tucker on the war in Ukraine. The response was telling: ”I’m just not sure it would be great TV to have him debate you on the war”. […] The message was clear: we don’t want to have a discussion about this and if you keep pressing the issue you won’t be coming back on the biggest show in America. There’s nothing wrong with any of this. No one is entitled to appear on anyone’s show to talk about a subject they nominate. Tucker and his producers are perfectly entitled to invite the guests they want to discuss the subjects they want. But the incident made it obvious to me that Tucker was not a truth-seeking journalist and that when it came to Russia and the war in Ukraine, at least, he had no intention of being objective. That much is obvious, especially after the events of the last week. But the real question is why? Like Kisin, I once saw Tucker Carlson as one of the good guys, on the same side. I am wiser now, even if we share a few of the same enemies. But sometimes, the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy. September 5th, 2024 | 51 comments
In a previous post – borrowing from C.S. Lewis – I used the word “unconciliatory” to describe Sir Keir Starmer, and I increasingly find it the most appropriate one when thinking about the tenor of governance to which we are now subject. Labour’s victory in the 2024 election was artificial and its well of support is ankle-deep; since only one in five of the electorate actually voted for the party it was already unpopular at the very point of taking office. Politicians who were not thoroughgoing mediocrities would, finding themselves in such a position, be prudent. They would recognise their priorities to be consolidation, calmness and concession – their aim would be to lay stable foundations for future governance with quiet competence. But the current crop do not really understand the word ‘prudence’, or like it. So we are patently not going to get that. We are instead going to get a programme of improvement imposed upon us from above: eat your greens, do your press-ups, and do as nanny says (oh, and hand over your pocket money while you’re at it). This will all unravel very quickly. People will not get with the programme, because people never really do, and certainly not when it has been designed by those they actively mistrust and sense have nothing but disdain for them. And therefore, in short order, as the truth dawns on the Government that the people are not on board with its plan of action, the sense of disappointment it feels is going to turn to rage. This will in turn have the inevitable result, as the rage becomes nakedly apparent, that the population will start to kick back – mulishly, and hard. I highly commending this article, read the whole thing. September 4th, 2024 | 10 comments
Consider Mark Zuckerberg’s revelation and its implications for our understanding of the last four years, and what it means for the future. On many subjects important to public life today, vast numbers of people know the truth, and yet the official channels of information sharing are reluctant to admit it. The Fed admits no fault in inflation and neither do most members of Congress. The food companies don’t admit the harm of the mainstream American diet. The pharmaceutical companies are loath to admit any injury. Media companies deny any bias. So on it goes. And yet everyone else does know, already and more and more so. This is why the admission of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was so startling. It’s not what he admitted. We already knew what he revealed. What’s new is that he admitted it. We are simply used to living in a world swimming in lies. It rattles us when a major figure tells us what is true or even partially or slightly true. We almost cannot believe it, and we wonder what the motivation might be. September 3rd, 2024 | 30 comments
Have I or have I not done anything different here? I don’t suppose they will be exhuming William Shakespeare any time soon, but what she said was no worse than this. It was words, nothing more. We are now firmly in an authoritarian police state. A substantial custodial sentence for hurty words is the kind of thing we thought was confined to the old Soviet Union, but it looks as if the ghost of that monstrosity is alive and well in modern Britain. September 2nd, 2024 | 25 comments
Starmer has also always been happy to be accused of running a ‘nanny state’. Much of the agenda that he and his Health Secretary Wes Streeting have revealed more widely for the NHS borders on that, with a focus on preventive healthcare rather than waiting until a patient needs acute (and more expensive) treatment. But an interesting question is whether the new government would have gone for this kind of ban had the Tories not already suggested it. As Katy explains here, the fact that Rishi Sunak championed the move first has made it much easier for Labour to take steps to crack down on smoking more generally. It is, she says, plausible that this approach could be extended to fast food and alcohol consumption. In fact, it wouldn’t make much sense if Starmer talks about the cost to the NHS of smoking but takes no action on obesity, even if that problem is far more complex than the relatively easy win of making it harder to smoke cigarettes. And it will be much harder for the Conservatives to argue against those further moves because they were the ones who started all this off – in legislative terms, at least.  August 30th, 2024 | 10 comments
“Ms. Harris’s handlers should have enough respect for the voters, and for their candidate, to let her stand alone and answer questions by herself. Joe Biden was allowed to hide in his basement and avoid tough questioning during the Covid campaign of 2020. We all know how that turned out.” One of my theories is that Harris is not allowing herself, or being allowed, to speak on her own in an interview not just because she is stupid, and a Leftist who might blurt out what she really might think. It is also the risk she is going to cackle halfway through answering a question. Imagine, if you will, she is asked about a trade deal with the UK, say, or defence and Ukraine and the Baltics, and she starts to get a fit of the giggles. The handlers may also have worked out the Keir Starmer/Rachel Reeves (UK prime minister, Chancellor) strategy in the UK before the 4 July general election, which is to avoid talking in detail on policy, keep things as vague as possible, block requests for specifics, and then go in hard and Leftist when in power. Under the UK’s winner-takes-all system, with a split opposition and low turnout, this has been a successful gamble. In the US, where much of the MSM is covering for Harris, her approach may also succeed in November. These situations make me wish for a more rigorous age. I recall from the 80s there was, in the UK, a Sunday current affairs programme, on ITV, a show called Weekend World, initially hosted by the late Peter Jay (son of a former UK government minister) and later taken over by Brian Walden (a Labour MP who went Thatcherite, as some do) and finally, Matthew Parris. Jay was good, Parris was okay and Walden was brilliant. The first half of the programme would involve an analysis of a particular issue (striking unions, state of the economy, rise of the SDP, public finances, the nuclear deterrent, drug use, what to make of Gorbachev, etc) followed by a 25-minute interview with a senior minister or senior opposition figure (politicians such as Denis Healey, Margaret Thatcher, Peter Shore, Nigel Lawson, Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Cecil Parkinson, Michael Heseltine, etc). These were political figures of gravitas, who were asked difficult questions, probed hard for answers, and not allowed to get off with issuing word salads. The analysis of a story was rigorous; the questioning was forensic, polite and as sharply revealing as that of any clever attorney. And all done on a Sunday lunchtime just after the roast lamb and glass of Cote de Rhone and before the afternoon film or the rugby. The show would be the talk of Westminster for the early part of the week. Walden could get a politician, such as Neil Kinnock, Roy Hattersley or Norman Tebbit to say more than, perhaps, they wished, but it was all done with such cleverness. I don’t buy into the whole “in the good old days” line on everything, but in my view, some of the calibre of journalism, and the quality of those running for office, or in office, has declined, and on both sides of the Pond. Back to Mrs Harris. I doubt her handlers (the fact she has such people makes her sound like a child) would let her within a mile of a journalist and recovering political figure such as a Jay or Walden, or, to give a more modern case, Andrew Neil and their American counterparts. Not. Going. To Happen. And so here we are. August 29th, 2024 | 41 comments
Striking Hezbollah is a very low-risk proposition compared to striking targets in Gaza or Iran. Every single Gaza strike brought the possibility of mass casualties, but in Gaza, this was a feature, not a bug for HAMAS. HAMAS needs civilian casualties because they cannot win a fight against Israel. The world must be so horrified that they end the conflict with a cease-fire and a cease-fire means a HAMAS win. However, civilians in southern Lebanon can flee north, which is something that cannot be done by residents of Gaza. This makes Hezbollah a much more attractive target and reduces the amount of propaganda that can be released by Hezbollah. Hezbollah is in a bad situation and they are starting to realize that Iran is not coming to help them. August 27th, 2024 | 13 comments
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