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December 14th, 2007 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
 “The loss of a leg may generally be regarded as a more real calamity than the loss of a mistress.” – Adam Smith. I think I agree, although I guess it depends on the mistress. December 8th, 2007 | 45 comments - (Comments are closed)
It seems to me that we’ve reached the point at which a facility that bans firearms, making its patrons unable to defend themselves, should be subject to lawsuit for its failure to protect them. The pattern of mass shootings in “gun free” zones is well-established at this point, and I don’t see why places that take the affirmative step of forcing their law-abiding patrons to go unarmed should get off scot-free. December 7th, 2007 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of my great regrets is that I never saw a Lightning take off. – By regular Samizdata commenter Nick M. I hate to rub it in, Nick, but I did, as a young kid at RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk, on a day out with my old man (RAF navigator in the 1950s). A totally awesome sight and noise: my ears are still probably ringing with the impact. Here’s a picture of one of these bad-ass beauties. December 4th, 2007 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
Disturbing reports have emerged that Gordon Brown is rude to his secretaries – or garden girls, as they are known inside Downing Street. He is said to shout at them abusively. On one occasion he is reported to have impatiently turfed one of the girls out of her chair and sat down to use the keyboard himself. All recent prime ministers – Thatcher, Major, Blair – were loved by the garden girls. All recent prime ministers from time to time endured problems. Only Gordon Brown has vented his frustrations on secretaries, who can never answer back or speak for themselves. In the end this intemperate and regrettable conduct may cause him as much damage as Mr Abrahams. – the sting in the tale of an article in the latest Spectator by Peter Oborne under the heading At the heart of the Labour funding scandal is the moral collapse of a once-great party. November 30th, 2007 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
November 24th, 2007 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Not since Sue Lawley invited him on to Desert Island Discs can Gordon Brown have agonised for so long over his CD collection. November 23rd, 2007 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
You cannot trust any agency with people’s personal data. The quote of Britain’s political week. There is a massive breakthrough in the public understanding of the database state, and the Government is finding it a real struggle to contain it. BBC journalists (Eg. Newsnight, The World Tonight, etc) are making an explicit connection between the three real monsters: the National Identity Scheme, Connecting for Health, and ContactPoint. My personal touchstone for success is when Criminal Records Bureau disclosure starts to be criticised in the public presses. Bonus quote:
Now is not a time to rest. November 22nd, 2007 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
The immense majority of our people consider economic freedom as radically immoral. It scandalises them in the fullest sense of the word. – Daniel Villey, “Economique et Morale”, in Pour une Economie Liberee (1946), quoted in Economics and Its Enemies, by William Oliver Coleman. The latter book is an astonishingly good piece of scholarship. Its passages on the persecution of economists in the former Soviet Union are harrowing. November 21st, 2007 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
“You could argue, indeed, that the great lesson of the 20th century – desperately hard learned in less fortunate countries than Britain, but tough to swallow even here – is that the state does not have the answer to human problems in the way that so many hoped so naively for so long.” – Martin Kettle, at the Guardian. I love his expression “you could argue”. There’s no argument, Martin. The failure of the state is so total, so widely proven, that it is quite astonishing that it has taken some folk a while to catch on. November 20th, 2007 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
But Mark wants freedom for unhealthy things! – one of the Liberal Democrat leadership candidates on today’s BBC Politics Show. November 18th, 2007 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The stock market is pure capitalism. The stock you buy doesn’t know if you’re white or black, male or female, old or young, American or French. Prices are dictated by supply and demand and nothing else. It’s global, efficient, wildly volatile, always surprising: raw and beautiful.” Ken Fisher investment management chief and Forbes columnist. November 17th, 2007 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
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