There are certain things you have to be realistic about. Dirty Harry would not be on a police department at my age.
– Clint Eastwood. Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival.
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So that’s it. The argument is over… Low tax-low spend economics is finally threatening to become not just irresistible in terms of rational debate and empirical evidence – which, in fact, it is has been since at least the 1980s – but something far more devastating in electoral terms: it is poised to become cool. It will now be unthinkably unfashionable at dinner parties to defend the notion of the state as the monopoly supplier of virtue and fairness. – Janet Daley in a Telegraph blog May 20th, 2008 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
 “Two substantive political issues are the federal budget deficit and the war in Iraq. Now, if you’re electing Democrats to control government spending, then you’re marrying Angelina Jolie for her brains. This leaves the Democrats with one real issue: Iraq. And so far the best that any Democratic presidential candidate has been able to manage with Iraq is to make what I think of as the high school sex promise: I will pull out in time, honest dear.” – PJ O’Rourke. He is still the greatest. May 15th, 2008 | 45 comments - (Comments are closed)
I just came across this. What’s happened is that they’ve discovered another Vivaldi opera, and classical music blogger Jessica Duchen is less than thrilled:
Well said. Or to put it another way, the trouble with the authentic movement is that it isn’t actually very authentic. But the real point here is not the alleged tedium of Vivaldi operas, so much as the exuberantly self-centred relish of her own eloquence with which Madamina Duchene writes about them. Lovely. May 14th, 2008 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Actually, it is even worse than that. – An unnamed BBC news journalist with whom I unexpectedly found myself drinking on Saturday, when asked if the BBC really is the Stalinist bureaucracy it is reputed to be. May 13th, 2008 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
“If the BBC was given charge of a three star Michelin restaurant, it would puree all the food and feed it to its customers through straws.” May 12th, 2008 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia – fear of Islam – seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture – to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques – it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers. As the killer of Theo Van Gogh told his victim’s mother this week in a Dutch courtroom, he could not care for her, could not sympathise, because she was not a Muslim. The trouble with this disgusting arrogance and condescension is that it is widely supported in Koranic texts, and we look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s mediaeval ass? – Mary Jackson quotes from a Spectator article by London’s newly elected mayor Boris Johnson written just after the July 7th attacks on London (but Boris backtracked during the recent campaign) May 8th, 2008 | 67 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The Tories are free-marketeers – they have a mechanism to get rid of their leader on a wet weekend. Labour are central planners, so adopt protectionist policies.” – Fraser Nelson, over the Spectator’s Coffee House blog. His quote makes a fair bit of sense, even if you, like yours truly, wonder about the free market credentials of David Cameron’s Conservative Party. May 5th, 2008 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
The following choice quote has perhaps already been recycled here. It has surely done the rounds elsewhere. But just to be sure, here it is for Samizdata readers, either again or for the first time:
Which, I think you will agree, nicely sums up the Samizdata attitude towards politicians, whether we have been “in government” on not. Usually, just having a particularly governmental bit of government done to us is sufficient, and it does not require five years of it to happen before such enlightenment is arrived at. And you certainly do not have to be a politician for half a decade to find out how nasty politics is. This was said by Antonio Martino, Italy’s Defence Minister from 2001 until 2006, at the 2006 meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Guatemala. It was quoted by Charles Murray at the start of this speech, which was given in Washington just after that MPS meeting. I came across this speech by Murray because I was looking for a picture of him to use in a posting at my education blog, about this article by Murray entitled The age of educational romanticism. May 5th, 2008 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
How do we trust a guy who says he knows about London, when he’s just taken three of his kids out of state school and put them into private schools? – Arabella Weir, on Boris, in The Guardian’s desperate chrestomathy of leftyluvviedom for Ken. I would say it indicates very clearly that he does know something about London’s state schools. More penetrating political insight from woman of the people Ms Weir here. Foreign readers may be aghast at the political culture of central control the latter clip reveals. It is not for the faint-hearted libertarian – or for that matter anyone, conservative or liberal, with a sincere belief in separation of powers and limited government. May 3rd, 2008 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
“We’ve had it with baby boomer politics. We’ve had it with coteries and courts, dens and sofas. But if we are fed up with that private politics, we are also tired of the public face of politics. We are told that modern politics is about TV studios: that poisonous truth may be about to become untrue. Westminster and Whitehall might yet make a come-back, as bastions of decently-argued policy and its delivery. This is a switch away from post-60s trends. But it needn’t be a backward step to snobbery and stuffiness.” I hope he is right, although I doubt that Westminster and Whitehall have ever achieved a high point of “decently argued policy and its delivery”. Rose-tinted spectacles, and all that. May 3rd, 2008 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
We are marvelling at the multiple possibilities of Oyster, but come back here in 10 years’ time and we will have chips inserted under our skin or inside our heads – Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, quoted by Computing [Those foreign readers who are unfamiliar with Oyster should maybe start here. Those unfamiliar with our dear leader, the mayor, can read his official bio here, but Red Ken is a massive subject, and if you can understand his career then you know more about British politics than I do. Here is a recent friendly (!) blog post. Now if you’ll excuse me, it is 6.43am and I am off to vote.] May 1st, 2008 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
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