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“Hello. Is that the Ministry of Tourism? I’ve just been captured by ISIS, and I’d like to make a complaint. A very strong complaint”. I’d like to reassure my mother that I was not actually in Syria, but in Lebanon just across the border when my phone picked up a Syrian network. Also, the guys from Hezbollah who asked me questions about why I was taking photos were really quite friendly. February 16th, 2015 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
 This obsession with tax avoidance is not the mark of a morally enlightened society. It is the mark of a society that is refusing to face up to the real problems in its midst. There is no moral clarity to be gained from gawping at individuals’ tax returns, only moral scapegoating. February 16th, 2015 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ok, this had me re-reading it several times as I was not sure if I was misunderstanding something. Someone called Max Fisher was taking exception to this.
The replies are pretty amusing. February 15th, 2015 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
You are probably all aware of the attack in Denmark earlier today by certain advocates of the religion of peace. But this is inspiring stuff:
They had my respect regardless for simply holding the meeting in the first place, but doubly so now. February 14th, 2015 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
If Russia now presumes to dictate what should be the constitutional order in Ukraine and if he has gained the assent of the German chancellor and the French president, Landsbergis continues, then the world has the right, even the obligation to ask, “when will you begin to observe the [Russian] Constitution, Mr. Putin?” […] The Lithuanian leader said that he was disappointed that German Chancellor Angela Merkel apparently accepted Putin’s “puppet theater” when she suggested that the Kremlin leader had put pressure on the separatists to sign the agreement. To say that is also to give them a status independent of Moscow which they do not deserve. – Paul Goble discussing the views of Vytautas Landsbergis February 14th, 2015 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
We are now living in a corporate economy. We are living in an economy where capitalism, free markets, enterprise and ambition have been replaced and are often crushed by a modern form of corporatism, which is supported by all three political parties and the trade union movement. I by no means agree with Farage on everything (to put it mildly) but I cannot argue at all with that remark. February 13th, 2015 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
Oh good, a peace deal has been hammered out for the Ukraine.
… and in other news that is no doubt unrelated…
Thank goodness we have Putin’s word for it that Russia is not sending troops and large quantities of equipment into the Ukraine as part of a barely disguised invasion, for a moment then I thought there might be vastly less to this ‘deal’ than met the eye. February 12th, 2015 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
HMRC seems to be a law unto itself. Another inept quango making arbitrary decisions as it goes along February 11th, 2015 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Obey and you have nothing to fear.
Many people in the UK clearly think the book 1984 was an interesting suggestion rather than a warning. I know what that reminds me of. February 10th, 2015 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
You couldn’t have asked for a better insight into the po-mo, relativistic, judgement-dodging mush of modern Western liberalism than the recent commentary on IS. No less a figure than President Obama got the ball rolling last week when he said at the National Prayer Breakfast that we largely Christian Westerners should come down from the moral highground on the issue of Islamist violence. ‘Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ… [And] slavery and Jim Crow all too often [were] justified in the name of Christ’, he said. If you heard a smartarse sixth-former who’d just discovered Richard Dawkins’ Twitterfeed and is prepping for a BA in post-colonialist codswallop say ‘We burned people 500 years ago, you know’, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid. But the leader of the free world? The face of ostensibly Christian America? The man who, for better or worse, is the embodiment of the West? For Obama to respond to Islamist violence by saying ‘we did it, too’ is surreal — like if in 1985 Ronald Reagan had said, ‘I had to queue for eight minutes the other day to pay for my loaf of bread, so let’s lay off the Soviets, yeah?’ February 10th, 2015 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
February 9th, 2015 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
There’s nothing funnier than an electronic billboard showing a Windows error message, so obviously I stop to take a photo. A man comes up behind me. It is a solider in fatigues with a gun. “No photo”. This is a little tiresome. I attempt to point out that I am attempting to take a photo of a billboard, and what possible security risk could this be, but (as always) this is futile. Also, do you have any idea how easy it would be for me to take a photo of *anything* with modern technology without you realising it? But I know the rules, and they are rules. I accede and walk on. There are various security barriers and roadblocks nearby, so there is sensitive stuff nearby – government buildings, I think. I block further, there are more security barriers, a guard post, and a soldier on duty. I am unsure I am allowed to walk down the road. I point down the road and beckon to the soldier, politely. “It’s okay to walk down there?”. “Oh, sur.. Where are you from?” “Australia”. “O wow”. (Excitement). “I love Australia. Where Australia?” “Sydney”. “Oh, great!!!!. I was in Granville”. (Fairly nondescript westerly but not extreme westerly suburb of Sydney, probably best known to me as the location of Australia’s worst rail disaster in the 1970. Perfectly pleasant place). “Yeah, man. Granville” “Where are you going?”. He now wants to give me directions. I wasn’t asking for directions – just wanting to know if he would stop me if I tried to walk down the street. However, if he wants to give me directions, I’ll let him give me directions. “Monot street”. “Oh, about 200 metres that way. Have a great time”. “You too. Come to Australia again some time”. “Yeah. But I’m in the army. Fuck man!!!!”. (He holds up his palm. I give him a high five). “Yeah. You’re in the army. Fuck man”. Explaining that I am completely opposed to compulsory military service as a matter of high principle and I therefore completely support his feelings would probably be excessive. I go on my way, hoping that the safety was firmly in place on his rifle throughout all this. February 9th, 2015 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
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