It is very difficult to find an issue that voters place lower on the list than climate change
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There is an excellent VICE News report from Lebanon on how things are continuing to spill over the border from Syria, with a good range of local views presented. I like how the VICE team mostly just lets things speak for themselves rather than doing excessive editorialising. They really do make CNN look like Disney’s Mickey Mouse News Network. Also there is a rather splendid clip from an anti daesh Islamic State musical performance. When Hezbollah starts to sound measured, you know things are messed up almost beyond the ability of sane minds to comprehend. Recommended. November 7th, 2014 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
 On the ECB’s own website, they say that negative interest rates will “benefit savers in the end because they support growth and thus create a climate in which interest rates can gradually return to higher levels.” I’m not sure a more intellectually dishonest statement could be made; they’re essentially telling people that the path to prosperity is paved in debt and consumption, as opposed to savings and production. These people either have no idea how economies grow and prosper, they’re outright liars, or they’re completely delusional. November 6th, 2014 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
As has been pointed out before, we are not edging closer to be becoming a police state in the UK, we already are one.
I would be curious to know what legal grounds were invoked to confiscate these items of private property that were being used for political expression. UPDATE: The BBC article has been changed and now no longer contains the following section which I cut and pasted from the original article:
And indeed I do not see that on the Sussex Police twitter either. Removed? Interesting. UPDATE 2: Ah, this makes me proud to be English 😀 November 5th, 2014 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy. – Guy Fawkes, political activist, performance artist and architectural critic (1570-1606) November 5th, 2014 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is an interesting article on the BBC website about a controversial new app promoted by the Samaritans, a charity who provide a helpline and other support for people suffering emotional distress or considering suicide:
Via the Guardian article on the controversy, I found two posts by Adrian Short, “Unethical uses for public twitter data” and “Samaritans radar must close”. His arguments mix calls for regulation by law, with which I disagree, and acute observations about the implications for privacy and whether this app will help or harm those who talk about their emotional problems on Twitter. What do you think? November 4th, 2014 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Privacy never an absolute right” in spook, translates as “state shall be able to invade privacy if convenient, without particular reason”. November 4th, 2014 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
– Zoe Williams, writing in the Guardian. November 3rd, 2014 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
(This is the text of a talk I gave at the Adam Smith Institute last week. More than one person has asked me for it, so I make it available here.) I am here to defend the Human Rights Act. It is not an idealistic defence but a pragmatic defence, rooted in historical context. Should classical liberals support the Human Rights Act against repeal? Do we need it? My answer is yes. Our reactions to phrases become readily conditioned. And so it has been with “human rights”. Let us remember for a moment that the full title of the agreement that is under siege here is the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. If it were called the Fundamental Freedoms Act would it be as easy to undermine? Sad to say ‘human rights’ do have a bad name, and they have that bad name for good reasons. Their strongest proponents often do the most harm to their reputation – not because of the legal content of what they say, but of their approach to the law. This comes in two forms which sometimes overlap: the rarer is soft revolutionism from the far left – human rights as a transitional demand. This approach makes human rights a movement more than a doctrine or legal concept.… a means to control the terms of any political debate. More common is a not entirely conscious belief that human rights and the Human Rights Act in particular embody the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth of how states should treat people. It’s a sort of human-rights fundamentalism, a desire for revealed wisdom in which “but that is contrary to Art 6” is a morally conclusive statement. → Continue reading: The Human Rights Act as a constitution of liberty [no, really] November 2nd, 2014 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is how in 1918 Times readers first found out about Spanish flu:  The Times 3 June 1918 p5 You can say that again. It ended up killing 40 million people. Incidentally the Wikipedia page on the subject is an appalling mess. At one point it claims that it began on the Allied side of the front, at another that it began on the Central Powers’ side. At one point it claims that it was particularly lethal to those with strong immune systems and at another to those with weak immune systems. Having said that I love the suggestion that it was called Spanish flu because that was the origin of the first reports of the disease. It was the origin of the reports not because it was the first place to get the disease but because wartime censors did not want to encourage the enemy by admitting its presence. So, it’s possible that this was not how Times readers first found out about it. November 1st, 2014 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Normally it’s rather difficult to get the news media to lose their shit like a bunch of screeching schoolkids over a story like, “Defense Manufacturer Offers New Product That Makes Incremental Advances on Existing, Widely-Used Technology.” But fortunately for Israeli defense manufacturer Rafael, the maker of the Iron Dome short-range air defense system, reporters don’t always understand what it is they’re reporting on. November 1st, 2014 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
October 31st, 2014 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
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