Liberty is always dangerous – but it’s the safest thing we have.
– Bob Geldof That is pretty good; but liberty is not a thing. It might be better to say it is the safest choice we have.
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One mechanism for ensuring the individual does take responsibility for his or her health is social stigma. For many a year we have been enjoined to cease stigmatising the morbidly obese, the terminally drunk and skagheads, because it really isn’t their fault — and as a result an important means of combating these social ills has been thrown away. Stigmatising has a point; it is not just fun to shout abuse at fat people, it is socially useful too. – Rod Liddle, who talks some sense, although he is a bit of a yob himself. Update: some people have asked if I support all of his argument. I do not. For a start, obesity is not something one can define precisely; secondly, it can add to the generally authortarian, bullying atmsophere in which we live if it is deemed acceptable to make all kinds of fun of the largely-built, or whatever. But Liddle is quite correct to locate the issue of personal responsibility and to get away from the victim-culture angle that is so often exploited by the medical profession and their political friends July 10th, 2008 | 49 comments - (Comments are closed)
 On that miraculous Saturday, therefore, when the Vulcan took to the skies again – there was perhaps only one regret – that the bomb bay was not filled with ordnance, with the destination Brussels via Westminster. – EU Referendum. The author had been to watch the magnificent example of Cold War aviation take to the skies once more. Here’s a link to a site about this splendid aircraft. July 8th, 2008 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Thousands are dying every year thanks to Britain’s health service not delivering the standards people expect and receive in other European countries. Billions of pounds have been thrown at the NHS but the additional spending has made no discernable difference to the long-term pattern of falling mortality. This is a colossal waste of lives and money. We need to learn lessons from European countries with healthcare systems that don’t suffer from political management, monopolistic provision and centralisation. – Matthew Sinclair, TaxPayers’ Alliance (via Helen Evans) July 7th, 2008 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
I began fully-listening when Ellis Cashmore appeared as a ‘witness’. Cashmore is ‘professor’ of Culture, Media and Sport, surely the Andrex of academic disciplines. You can listen to him on the website – it’s the programme about celebrity – he appears at about twenty minutes. You may need a new laptop as these machines don’t take kindly to being flung across the room. The gist of what Cashmore said was contained in his line ‘Cultures are no better or worse than each other’. Right then, Prof, here’s my time machine and, woosh, here we are in Tiananmen Square during Mao’s Cultural – geddit? – Revolution. You, being an intellectual, are about to be stamped to death for the entertainment of the peasants. Luckily, I am on hand to, first, console you with the thought that all cultures are equal and, secondly, to operate the time machine and whisk you off to Germany in the thirties. I, having a Jewish mother, am being dragged off by Brown Shirts, but, luckily, you are on hand to console me with the thought that all cultures are equal. Sadly, you cannot operate the time machine. … Who are these people? What are they for? – Bryan Appleyard listens to the BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze July 6th, 2008 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
To succeed in modern politics you should take care to be a bland, self-preserving, sober, drugless, funless, dull-witted bore for years beforehand. – Libby Purves, discussing leftyluvviedom’s cultivation of the Two Minutes Hate1 against Boris Johnson. —- July 1st, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
“I don’t want to remake America. I’m an immigrant, and one reason I came here is because most of the rest of the Western world remade itself along the lines Sen. Obama has in mind. This is pretty much the end of the line for me. If he remakes America, there’s nowhere for me to go – although presumably once he’s lowered sea levels around the planet there should be a few new atolls popping up here and there.” – Mark Steyn, who despite his recent legal hassles, has not lost his sense of humour. June 30th, 2008 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’m pretty sure that a lot of people’s (by which I mean Government’s) assumptions about a ‘digital divide’ are a myth. I think they have visions of a bunch of poor, obese black kids sitting in a council house eating turkey twizzlers, cleaning their guns, just wishing for the day they could access this internet thing that people are talking about. – a friend who works in local government in UK, responding to Social networks may subvert ‘digital divide’. June 25th, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
June 24th, 2008 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’ve spent more than a decade working as a nightclub doorman. I’ve been involved in hundreds of violent incidents, including many away from the club. I can state unequivocally that in situations where some of these punks decide they’re going to pick on myself, or someone with me, with the intention of stealing our property, terrorising us or just for shits and giggles, on the occasions I’ve been armed, the situation has suddenly resolved itself when I produce a weapon. A doorman, quoted at the blog of Rob Fisher, occasional commenter over these parts. June 24th, 2008 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The fundamental story about consumer taste, in modern times, is not one of dumbing down or of producers seeking to satisfy a homogeneous least common denominator at the expense of quality. Rather, the basic trend is of increasing variety and diversity, at all levels of quality, high and low.” – Tyler Cowen, Creative Destruction: how globalisation is changing the world’s cultures, page 127. June 21st, 2008 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Freedom is participation in power.” – Mike Gravell, on Thom Hartmann’s Air America show. “O, RLY?” – Commenter Sunfish, when he heard that. Yes, Sunfish, ‘Freedom’ is the freedom to join a gang and fight over who gets plundering rights on ‘your’ turf, I thought everyone knew that! June 18th, 2008 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
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