As masters of their estates, the rioters cock their legs and piss molotovs to provide the reek of burnt plastic that serves as their territorial marker.
– Philip Chaston
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November 9th, 2005 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
 With hindsight it can be stated that the outcome of the Industrial Revolution was that human beings no longer needed to go out and grab other people’s possessions by force, but merely to settle down, work hard and exchange the considerable surplus they produced for something they wanted from the surplus someone else produced. How simple it all seems! Yet how hard to put into practice. – Findlay Dunachie (1928-2005 – his funeral is today) in The Success of the Industrial Revolution and the Failure of Political Revolutions: How Britain Got Lucky, page 6, published in 1996 by the Libertarian Alliance. November 8th, 2005 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
2005 Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter, displaying an interesting sense of historical perspective. November 5th, 2005 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
P.J. O’Rourke, All the Trouble in the World (page 199). I love the punchline. November 2nd, 2005 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
“We must have faith in the social and economic benefits of the free market. A real programme for prosperity will progressively remove the barriers to wealth creation in Britain today. We need to open ourselves to risk and treat adults like adults. The stock of regulations must be reduced: we should trust people to make their own mistakes and learn from them. And the flow of new regulation from the EU must also be reduced: our aim should be to take back control of employment and social regulation… “We must reduce and simplify taxes so we can take on with confidence the long term challenge of competing with China and India for jobs. This means not only proper control of public spending, but also a thoughtful and long-term strategy for tax reduction.” October 25th, 2005 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
October 21st, 2005 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
“On sighting an elephant Selous would instantly remove his trousers as he found it easier to pursue them in his underpants.” As one does. The quote is from Tom Quinn, Shooting’s Strangest Days. October 19th, 2005 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Against the Government’s position, I can see no purpose in disputing that our helping to overthrow Saddam Hussein has inflamed Islamist totalitarian groups. Why deny what we should take pride in? October 11th, 2005 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
We embrace these concepts of the private sector, the marketplace and freedom of expression. So the contrast is stark and the choice is clear. October 10th, 2005 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Actually it was a much cheerier gathering than I expected: usually the Tories have a leader who embarrasses them, but this year they have no leader and everyone’s full of beans. – Eamonn Butler at the Conservative Party Conference October 5th, 2005 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
The political system tends to lag behind technological change, which is often a good thing. I remember attending a House subcommittee hearing in the 1980s on whether the U.S. should create a phone-computer system modeled on the state-funded French Minitel, a text-only network being promoted as the wave of the future. Fortunately, the Internet exploded – making Minitel obsolete – before Congress could fund such a project. – Glenn Harlan Reynolds reviewing this book October 4th, 2005 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
Colin MacCabe, writing in the Observer, on why he has left the Labour Party. October 2nd, 2005 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
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