“Revulsion, however justified, is a dangerous counsellor.”
– Bruce Anderson, on the continuing saga of Rupert Murdoch. A good article overall, somewhat spoiled by a daft remark about Australia.
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In this, which is about some guys from Loughborough who have decided to mark cities (scroll down a bit) like they are undergraduate essays (Alpha+, Beta+, Beta-, etc.), NickM waxes lyrical about Prague:
But he adds a warning:
Well, EU membership doesn’t seem to have fucked London yet, despite decades of the EU trying everything they can think of to accomplish that. London, according to the Loughborough guys, is equal top (Apha++) with New York. NickM goes further. He reckons New York is overrated and has London top on its own, as the greatest city in the world “bar none”. He doesn’t say why, however. Personally, I love London, because I live here and I just do. But I do not know where I think it ranks in the great city stakes because I seldom leave it, and hence can’t compare it with other urban greatness contenders. I have been to Prague, which I thought was pretty good. The middle is amazing, wall-to-wall listed buildings, as we would say in London. As I assume is the case in Prague too, i.e. you may not smash it down and replace it with a concrete blockhouse, just because you “own” it. Which I understand. But the uninterruptedly historic nature of the centre means that nothing new can now be built. In other words, the centre of Prague feels like a film set, and will feel more and more like one as time passes. See also: Paris. July 14th, 2011 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I like this, towards the end of a long comment from Michael Strong, on this piece by Clay Shirky:
“Deliberative” democracy, i.e. the sort less like a hack saw, doesn’t work beyond about 10,000 people, he says. See also Amartya Sen, who also admires what the hack saw can do. Being an American with a knowledge of history, Strong does not claim that democracy prevents civil war. But I would say that democracy does make civil war far less likely, provided certain other conditions are also met, like a relatively static political entity and not too much tribal voting (i.e. a willingness of at least some voters to vote this way or that way, depending). In many ways (but not the most important ways), democracy is civil war. Which is precisely why it works as well as it does as a substitute for civil war. Whoever wins the democracy civil war would probably also have won the real thing, using not unrelated methods – bribes, threats, propaganda barrages, opinion polls, friendliness towards turnable enemies, treachery towards dependable friends, and so on and so forth. That being so, the losers take their defeat. Instead of contesting the result of the election by force (i.e. starting a real civil war) they wait for the next round. Which, by the way, means that the reasonable certainty that there will be a next round is crucial to democracy’s effectiveness. It is often said of Hitler that he was impeccably democratic. He was indeed democratically elected, but promptly cancelled all subsequent elections. At best, democratically speaking, he scores one out of two. Other political strong-arm men, who got power by old fashioned civil warlike methods, but who then left a democratic legacy, that is, they contrived (or at least permitted) the circumstances which would allow elections in the future, get denounced as “totally undemocratic”, when they also score one out of two. And which election matters more, the last one, or the simple fact of the next one, when it comes to how safe and sound life would be right now? None of which means that I love democracy, merely that I prefer it to civil war, famine, concentration camps etc.. Cue clichés about democracy being the worst system, except … More to the point, here’s what looks like another quite good link to the sort of notions I and Michael Strong agree with. One of the many reasons why I would like to live for more like the next two centuries, rather than the mere two decades which is my likely best shot, is that I would love to see what happens to democracy in the next little clutch of decades. Currently, it is just growing and growing in strength, for all of the above reasons. I’m not the only one who wants a quiet life, and will settle for a disappointing one if that’s the price to be paid. But, will democracy last? Will it, for instance, attach itself to the emerging government of the world which I believe we are now witnessing in our time? If it does, will it then do anything to prevent global civil wars? If democracy fades, what might replace it? When I say “democracy” please understand that by that I mean big noisy elections deranging regular television for weeks at a time, political parties, legislative assemblies of self-important bores, lying, cheating, thieving, grandstanding, moral self-aggrandisement and relentless disappointment for almost all concerned, bar only a tiny few particularly rapacious and particularly lucky winners. I do not mean that fatuous construct of political malcontents known as “real democracy”, as in: everything the malcontent wants from democratically elected politicians, however far fetched, such as financial security for all (especially him), equality for all (ditto), openness of decision-making (by others rather than in the unlikely event that he is deciding anything of importance), environmental perfection, and immediate answers to his mad letters or emails to politicians, telling him that his mad arguments, no matter how numerous or how many CAPITAL LETTERS they may contain, have all triumphed. Speaking of political malcontents, what I want is free markets in everything, a cheap internet connection, a cheap digital camera with a twiddly screen which takes perfect pictures with just the one (mega-mega-zoom when I want it) lens, and to stay comfortably alive for at least the next two centuries (see above). But, I never refer to these desires as “real democracy”. July 13th, 2011 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Steve Baker, the MP whom we here actually rather like, has a piece in the latest Jewish Chronicle, which makes what seems to me like a very important point. I have this point alluded to vaguely, but never spelled out. It is that the outrageous behaviour of the merchant banking fraternity in recent years is as much a product of bad bank regulations as it is of mere capitalistic greed. It being the Jewish Chronicle he’s contributing to, Baker alludes to some scales that are criticised at the beginning of the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 11 (which American readers may consider rather appropriate, what with the times we (and they) are now living in). The particular rules that Baker zeroes in on are the accounting rules that define profit:
I am not qualified to second guess Baker on this. But I do know, as a general principle, that when one observes something going wrong with the world, one should not immediately assume that yet more laws and regulations are needed to curb whatever it may be. Rather, one should ask what laws or regulations – laws or regulations already in place – are causing or at the very least greatly exacerbating the problem in question, and should accordingly be got rid of. July 12th, 2011 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Christopher Hitchens – I hope he can fight his cancer as long as possible – has this crackerjack of a piece about Patrick Leigh Fermor, the soldier, explorer, journalist and raconteur who recently died at the age of 96:
Marvellous stuff. I have one of Fermor’s books on the shelf, as yet unread. I really look forward to dipping into it soon. July 12th, 2011 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Well, the reactions to the decision by Rupert Murdoch to shut the News of the World, and try and halt his empire collapsing, continue. Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, used to have a weekly column for a paper once known as “News of the Screws” (for non-Brits, this paper was obsessed by the sex lives of the rich, powerful and celebs). Nelson has thoughts about it at the Spectator’s own website. I think he gushes a bit too much and as the comments suggest, readers are not happy at Nelson’s defence of much of what the NoTW stood for over the decades. But never mind that. The great thing about the Spectator commenters is that they are often splendidly barmy, if not quite as consistently rude as over at the Guido Fawkes site. This one, by a “David Lindsay,” wins the prize for me. I quote it all, for its genuine insights and wrong-headed, state-worship of a kind that might make an old Soviet functionary blush (although it is entirely possible that Lindsay is a certain kind of “High Tory” who sentimentalises working class life). This comment reminds me of a piece of dialogue of that brilliant Peter Sellers film, “I’m All Right Jack”, when Sellers, playing the union shop steward constantly at loggerheads with “the bosses”, is praising life in Stalin’s Russia. Take it away, Mr Linsday:
I loved the patronising lines about brass and silver bands. I wish Peter Sellers were still alive now; how he would have loved this sort of comment and used it for his material. I am not sure if Mr Lindsay would get the joke. July 11th, 2011 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
A commenter called Guan-ju, writing about an article at the Big Hollywood blog concerning the oafish behaviour of some cinema-goers. Well said indeed. In my fortunate experience, I have generally not suffered from chatty couples, paper rustlers or smelly eaters. However, I often will be sitting in front of someone who keeps kicking the back of the chair. My usual response is to turn around slowly, and give the offending idiot my best attempt at the “Clint Eastwood stare”. Sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. (Alas, the use of something handy, like a taser is banned in the UK. Shame. It would be brilliant). The trouble is, of course, is that if you go to a cinema quite late, a lot of the audience will be fairly merry, indeed drunk. At least in the UK, anyway. And of course the type of film will affect this: if you are watching a French art house film, it is probably less likely to be an issue than if you are watching something like Transformers or Dumb and Dumber, or somesuch. On the other hand, the louder the movie (think Iron Man 2) and the more crazy the action, the more the usual pin-heads are dumbstruck into silence. Of course, while watching a Michael Moore “documentary”, I reckon that loud heckling is mandatory. July 11th, 2011 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
James Bartholomew, author of the splendid “The Welfare State We’re In”, weighs on on the subject of Sweden, long a poster child for socialists and possibly, even a certain type of right-winger:
Another paragraph:
Read the whole thing. July 10th, 2011 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
I did some coke, and slept with a whore. But that’s what a superinjunction is for! – Robbie Williams, at last week’s Take That show at Wembley, mocks the legalised suppression of free speech. Quoted by Fraser Nelson in his obituary for the News of the World, in the News of the World. July 10th, 2011 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
The last shuttle mission has begun… and Richard Branson announced he will be starting commercial flights next year:
If you add to this the not very far away cargo flights of the SpaceX Dragon capsule, followed by manned flights of same; the scheduled launch of the Bigelow space station in 2014; and the first flights of the SpaceX Heavy around the same time… not to mention things that XCOR, Masten, Armadillo, Boeing, Reaction Engines, Sierra Nevada and others are up to… we live in a very exciting time. The last flight of the Space Shuttle signals the beginning of the Space Age. July 8th, 2011 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Poor old Dave, he tries to mix with some common folk and look what happens.” A commenter, “Percy”, at the Spectator’s Coffee House blog, talking about the arrest of Andy Coulson, former press advisor to David Cameron. It has been a bit of bad summer for Mr Cameron. He’s lucky he has been up against such a weak opponent. July 8th, 2011 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
You see what’s happening? Two separate grievances and two separate targets – one totally justified, the other largely not – are being joined together. The “journalistic culture” Campbell has spent the past 10 years complaining about is not newspapers that have invaded people’s privacy – but newspapers that have been too unkind to important public servants such as himself. – Andrew Gilligan, under the headline: “Phone hacking scandal: enemies of free press are circling”. Indeed. July 8th, 2011 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
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