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“Let me say it again, the only newspapers around in the future will be very upmarket, all the downmarket stuff being more readily available on the internet or in magazines made of pulped squirrels that will be handed out free to the unemployable and the insane.” – Bryan Appleyard. Those squirrels cannot catch a break. January 13th, 2009 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
 “Politics is all very well in its place, that place being very much on the periphery of life.” – Tim Worstall, who has had an impressive year on his own blog, and seems to have quite marvellously upset one of the main figures of the Guardian’s columnists. Excellent. December 30th, 2008 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The forgotten man… He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pay.”
December 19th, 2008 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am deeply concerned about the sort of world we will bequeath to our children and I promise you, the minute I get back from my holiday I will write a letter to my MP demanding that they do whatever it is you want them to do. But please, for the time being, fuck off bastard hippies. – A fictional character articulating the sane human response to PlaneStupid, courtesy of the Daily Mash. I fear that for a lot of campaigners, being a nuisance is an end in itself, and other people’s annoyance is taken to signify how stupid and morally worthless ordinary people are – and thus as reinforcement by comparison of the overweening self-esteem of the campaigners themselves. Something similar is found in the shock-jockery of the blogosphere. I frequently spot the attitude in some NO2ID-ers but I do try to counteract it. People are entitled to want to get on with their lives in a way that is meaningful to them. If you want to persuade them, then give them a reason to care and listen, don’t bully and excoriate them. In the words of Dale Carnegie: “You can’t win an argument.” December 10th, 2008 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Un despote a toujours quelques bons moments ; une assemblée de despotes n’en a jamais. Si un tyran me fait une injustice, je peux le désarmer par sa maîtresse, par son confesseur, ou par son page ; mais une compagnie de graves tyrans est inaccessible Á toutes les séductions. [A despot still has good moments; an assembly of despots never does. If one tyrant mistreats me, I can get round him by means of his mistress, his priest, or his page-boy. But a staid company of tyrants is impervious to temptation.] – Voltaire. A remarkable characterisation of the monotonic puritanism of modern democratic government, but written in around 1760. I wonder whether C.S. Lewis’s better known pronouncement on those who torment us for our own good has its origin here. It is similar both in the thought expressed and the cadence of its expression. December 6th, 2008 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever. Dream of making a good home for all Mumbaikars, not just the denizens of $500-a-night hotel rooms. Dream not just of Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai or Shah Rukh Khan, but of clean running water, humane mass transit, better toilets, a responsive government. Make a killing not in God’s name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder – Suketu Mehta, author of a splendid book on India’s most wicked and exhilarating city, getting properly to the point, even if asking for a responsive government is getting into “Be careful what you wish for” territory. December 2nd, 2008 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
The arrest of Damian Green is quite appalling and so ridiculously Orwellian that I am almost tempted to vote Tory. I mean it. – a commenter here November 30th, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
November 25th, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
“There is no art which one government sooner learns of another, than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.” – The Wisdom of Adam Smith, page 194. November 23rd, 2008 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
“In the anointed we find a whole class of supposedly “thinking people” who do remarkably little thinking about substance and a great deal of verbal expression. In order that this relatively small group of people can believe themselves wiser and nobler than the common herd, we have adopted policies which impose heavy costs on millions of other human beings, not only in taxes but also in lost jobs, social disintegration, and a loss of personal safety. Seldom have so few cost so much to so many.” Thomas Sowell, the Vision of The Anointed, page 260. His analysis applies – with the odd exception – to the political/intellectual elites responsible for the expansion of government for the past 100 years or so. November 18th, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
To the authoritarian mind, freedom and chaos are synonymous. – Commentator Ian B, er, yesterday. My guess is that ‘Ian B’ does not stand for Ian Blair, nor is it a pseudonym of Liam Byrne MP. November 16th, 2008 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Many people have said that the internet is like the wild west in the gold rush and that sooner or later it will be regulated. What we need is for it to be regulated sooner rather than later – Barbara Follett, Minister of Kulture. November 15th, 2008 | 45 comments - (Comments are closed)
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