“The evidence is that when tariffs come down, tariff revenue tends to go up.”
– Peter Mandelson, EU trade commissioner, on why poor countries should liberalise trade
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About 120 years ago, Mme. Cadolle figured out that it made more sense for women’s breasts to be suspended from above than cantilevered from beneath. That is, she invented bra straps. So instead of walking around wearing the lingerie equivalent of the London Bridge, women could slide themselves into a Golden Gate. This was a huge relief – as anyone who has worn a strapless bra can tell you – because the London Bridge pretty much always falls down. – Belinda Luscombe in the course of asking Warren Buffet for better fitting bras – spotted by Amit Varma November 4th, 2007 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Whatever happened to getting your head down and doing the damn job? Whatever happened to going bowling in your own time? You want to take some of the crew from work? Well, that’s nice, too. And if a more fruitful professional relationship between a close-knit group of employees is the result, well isn’t that peachy? But really, if we are all big about this, shouldn’t we be able to interact productively without the panacea of fake camaraderie or a day throwing up in a corporate box at the races? Some of the 7/7 bombers went white-water rafting before the event, you know; and what great team players they turned out to be. – Martin Samuel. I have never suffered a “team building” trip away from the office, thank god (my boss has better things to do). November 2nd, 2007 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’ve yet find an area that I’ve studied extensively where the arguments justifying the state stand up to historical evidence. I think the state’s takeover of these aspects of human life occur for different reasons than the reasons currently given for the state in those areas, and that what we see is a lot of ex post rationalisation to justify the state. I haven’t looked at every area, and certainly may find some where I wouldn’t make that argument. But I have yet to find one. – Bruce L. Benson (one of the speakers at the LA/LI Conference last weekend) talks about his work to Patrick Crozier – the whole thing lasts a little over 15 minutes October 30th, 2007 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
For quite some while now, I have been meaning either to write this myself or to come across someone else writing this. Since the Australian blogger Russell Blackford beat me to it and I read him saying it this afternoon, here it now is:
In my experience there is nothing quite like the best sort of Australian academic or intellectual for calling bullshit bullshit. Forgive me if someone has already said this exact thing here already. What many writers and commenters here have definitely said many times is that much of the art of the propagandist lies in the inventing of and the destruction of words. The bad guys invent bad words and destroy good ones. We good guys invent good words and destroy bad ones. And “islamophobia” is a very bad word indeed. October 29th, 2007 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just because we are sometimes foolish does not mean that the government is any wiser. – Tim Harford commenting on Julian le Grand’s latest proposals. “[Le Grand] is not crazy. He is just wrong.” October 28th, 2007 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
I hate the use of the word ‘public’ as a synonym for ‘government’. The government is the government and the public is what is not the government. – Leon Louw, at today’s Libertarian Alliance/Libertarian International conference in London October 27th, 2007 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
October 24th, 2007 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
Sooner or later, every Marxist expresses his sense of public duty by first telling you and me what to say and then what to think. – Henry Porter He is speaking specifically of Ken Livingstone, but it is beginning to be clear that little of the former student left of the ’70s now in power has parted with the spirit of Howard Kirk. Mao may be the model more than Marx. The Long March Through the Institutions being near its end, we face an obsession with controlling the detail of other’s lives and eliminating the possibility of resistance. You will not escape by avoiding thought or being silent about dissident; it is necessary to act in the approved manner to show your enthusiasm for progress and democracy. October 23rd, 2007 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
David Attenborough is forever finding unusual creatures in the deepest parts of the ocean. He tells us how they can see down there in the murky depths and how they mate. He tells us where they live, how they raise their young and how they use their tentacles to find prey. But he never tells us the most important thing: what they taste like. – Jeremy Clarkson, the newspaper columnist and lead presenter of Top Gear, the BBC motoring programme. For people who do not know who David Attenborough is, he is the famous maker of very serious but also wonderfully filmed television documentaries about nature. October 21st, 2007 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
“We all have to compromise,” says Walt Chalmers (played by Robert Vaughn) “Bullshit,” replies Frank Bullitt, (Steve McQueen). From Bullitt. October 20th, 2007 | Comments are closed
I don’t care whether Monbiot read Sanskrit or the back of Frosties packets he is still a 24 carat felching tube jammed in the clacker of society. – Commenter Nick M October 18th, 2007 | Comments are closed
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