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My dad was a newsagent, I went to state school, I’m Asian, I work in the city and I earn loads of money. I do it so my parents and future children can have something close to the only kind of life Toynbee has ever known. Me explain my position? How about she explains her right to speak for the poor? – Peter Hoskin singles out that comment by Raj Chande on an excerpt from Polly Toynbee and David Walker’s book entitled Unjust Rewards August 9th, 2008 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Men do not like tits because they buy Zoo. Men buy Zoo because they like tits. – mr eugenides comments on Michael Gove’s aside about men’s mags in this August 6th, 2008 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
“I thought I’d begin by reading a sonnet by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.” August 5th, 2008 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
The moment that a policy “war” is declared these days, you can guess it’s doomed to gradual failure. August 4th, 2008 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
“We all know that politics is a con some of the time. It has begun to feel like politics is a con almost all of the time.” Well, some of us have never thought much of politics in the first place, certainly not politics as a professional job. July 31st, 2008 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Weren’t the eighties grand? Cash grew on trees or, anyway, coca bushes. The rich roamed the land in vast herds hunted by proud, free tribes of investment brokers who lived a simple life in tune with money. Every wristwatch was a Rolex. Every car was a Mercedes-Benz. A fellow could romance a gal without shrink-wrapping his privates and negotiating the Treaty of Ghent. Communist dictators were losing their jobs, not presidents of America and General Motors. Women wore Adolfo gowns instead of dumpy federal circuit court judge robes. The Malcolm who mattered was Forbes. Bill Clinton was only a microscopic polyp in the colon of national politics, and Hillary was still in flight school, hadn’t even soloed on her broom. What a blast we were having. The suburbs had just discovered Martha Stewart, the cities had just discovered crack. So many parties and none of them Democratic…Back then health care was a tummy tuck, not an inalienable right. If you wanted a better environment, you went to Laura Ashley.” July 26th, 2008 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
I often wonder how different individual lives in Britain would be if alcohol had never been invented. Just imagine all the couples who would never have got together without a little encouragement. All those unsent text messages and undeclared intentions. Can you imagine dancing, let alone pulling, in a sober club? – Iain Hollingshead, Twenty Something: the quarter-life crisis of Jack Lancaster July 25th, 2008 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Consider the fact that the Federal Reserve is a central planning committee. We are lucky, I think, to have intelligent, highly professional planners, but there are in-principle limits to what they can do with limited information, and so there is no way they are not going to get it wrong sometimes, or a lot of times. The housing “bubble”, which has turned out very badly for a lot of people, and the historically high price of gas, which is to a large extent a function of the low value of the American dollar, probably has had a lot to do with the policies chosen by our monetary central planners. Failures of government planning don’t discredit free markets. Rather, they suggest free markets might be worth trying some time. – Will Wilkinson, of the CATO Institute, on their blog. But of course, blaming the credit crunch, or high oil, or expensive bread and rice prices on evil speculators is soooo much more satisfying! July 24th, 2008 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
I might be wrong, but I don’t think a fellow who works at a gas station in the Midwest whose wife works as a nurse and commutes 27 miles a day and complains more about the cost of gas than the cost of dance lessons regards Obama as One of Us. They may like his views on this issue or that, and they may well vote for him in the name of Change or a serious belief in Obama’s positions, but if you grew up in a community that was already pretty well organized on its own, you might look at a Harvard grad “community organizer” who had the time and luxury to write an autobiography before he was 50 as something other than One of Us in the “second-shift / Costco” sense. – The wonderful James Lileks. Mind you, I am more interested in cutting the state down to size, rather than worrying whether Joe Sixpack or an old Etonian is in Downing Street or the Whitehouse. July 23rd, 2008 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Freedom of speech cannot be maintained in a society where nobody ever says anything subversive or inflammatory. … Unless it is resisted, the erosion of civil liberties will continue until there is no such thing as liberty and all opposition to authority will have become crime. July 20th, 2008 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
If you live in shit and continue to elect the people who keep you in shit simply because, historically, your family has always voted for shit, then possibly all you are going to get is … well … shit. – with his usual tact and sensitivity Devil’s Kitchen hints at a reason why the voters of Glasgow East might just consider not voting Labour any more July 19th, 2008 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
I think the United States is the greatest country that’s ever existed on earth. And I think that it is difficult to argue on objective grounds that it is not. I think the facts really point in that direction. It’s the greatest force for good of any country that’s ever been. I think it would be a mistake to say the United States is perfect; it certainly is not. But when historians look at these things on balance and measure the good with the bad – and I think if you do that on a rational basis and make a fair assessment – I think it’s hard to say that there is anything better. I wasn’t born in America – but I got here as fast as I could. – Elon Musk during an interview for “From Paypal to Outerspace”, TCSDaily, 2008-06-16 July 18th, 2008 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
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