Recommended Reading
An eclectic mix of comment, opinion, information and invective from around the web.
CREATIVE COMMONS: Attribute, non commercial, no derivs.
KEYWORDS: news, opinion, comment, climate change, environment, energy, education, economy, food, humanities, money, politics, science, tecnology
Solar Panels Subsidy Was The Most Ridiculous Green Scheme Deramed Up
A plan to subsidise solar panels on homes was “one of the most ridiculous schemes ever dreamed up”, a Government minister has said.
Lord Marland, an Energy minister, hit out at the cost of so-called feed-in tariffs, which the Government has axed as part of the cuts programme. Last week Court of Appeal ruled that the sudden axing of the tariffs ...
Goodbye Great Britain
Recently, there have been two powerful challenges to the conventional wisdom about the United States. First, Robert Kagan published a lengthy essay in The New Republic, arguing that predictions of America's decline as a global power are woefully premature. .Is it possible, I found myself wondering, to do something similar for Britain? Robert Colvile has a go in this Daily Telegraph article ...
Our rising debt levels are becoming unsustainable – soon we may be talking about wealth confiscation (By Daniel Knowles, Daily Telegraph)
Debt, debt, debt; we’re drowning in it. This morning, the Office for National Statistics published the latest estimates of public sector borrowing. Though borrowing is falling faster than anticipated, thanks to the fact that spending cuts are finally beginning to kick in, the national debt has risen to 64.2 per cent of GDP. More significantly,…
The Obama administration knifes Britain in the back again over the Falklands - By Nile Gardiner World
In yet another display of disdain for the Anglo-American Special Relationship, the Obama administration has weighed in on the mounting tensions between Great Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Just two days after Prime Minister David Cameron issued a robust statement in the House of Commons vowing to defend the sovereignty of the Falklands,…
Drones In The Hands Of The Paparrazi - It's an ethical minefield
America's use of drones for targeted killings is serious enough. But commercial and law enforcement uses are on the horizon. Whether you view them as model aeroplanes for grown-ups or the handmaidens of the killer robot, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, are taking off in earnest. ...
The Observer uncritically regurgitates Trotskyist smears against Katharine Birbalsingh- By Toby Young, Daily Telegraph
There’s a disgraceful attempt to smear Katharine Birbalsingh in this morning’s Observer. Under the headline “Katharine Birbalsingh criticised over ‘wasteful’ free school project“, the paper’s policy editor Daniel Boffey tries to create the impression that there’s growing local opposition to the Michaela Community School – Birbalsingh’s free school – which is due to open in…
We’re being sent the bill for the euro crisis again – this time by the IMF - By Daniel Hannan
First it was individual banks; then whole industries; then entire countries; now it’s the world. Western leaders have reacted to the failure of each bailout by decreeing a bigger one. Unable to admit their mistake, slaves to the defunct economist whose thinking dominates our economics faculties and central banks, they act like so many Nick Leesons,…
The Three Parent Family More on the progressive left's war on the family and the scientific dictaorship's attempts to dehumanize us all. Babies with three biological parents could be born within three years. Scientists have come up with an IVF technique that uses the undamaged DNA of a third party when couples risk giving their children a genetic conditions such as muscular dystrophy or ataxia. The Wellcome Trust has funded the research (the figures vary between £4 million and six million …
As Obama Positions Himself For A War In Syria We Learn That Like Gadaffi, Assad Is Popular With His People
Most Syrians back President Assad, but you'd never know from western mediaAssad's popularity, Arab League observers, US military involvement: all distorted in the west's propaganda war. Suppose a respectable opinion poll found that most Syrians are in favour of Bashar al-Assad remaining as president, would that not be major news? Well one did and we never heard a word of it in the Obama felching western media ...
Bullshit Sherlock
While other blogs are full of how great the cliff - faller ending of Sherlock Holmes was I felt a bit let down. The fake suicide was telegraphed all through the show. And the coda assured us Sherlock had survived. We should not forget of course it was the habit of ...
Will bringing back grammar schools boost social mobility? by Toby Young Daily Telegraph
The possibility that England may shortly see its first new grammar school in over 50 years has, predictably enough, re-opened the debate about selective education. Yesterday, for instance, Allison Pearson came down firmly in favour, while Fiona Millar shot back with an instant rebuttal. I’ll get into that argument in a moment, but first let’s be…
So Why Read Books Anymore
There is great “truth and beauty” in Homer’s Iliad, but I would not try to make his sale on such platitudes. Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains a classic. But I confess it can be hard to get through. Conrad’s Victory or Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil, if authored by writer X this year, would be trashed on Amazon.So what are the reasons, in this age of ...
Eric Holder and the Chicago Way In America Obama's Brownshirts are getting hysterical as they try to make race the major issue in the election campaign.
Dystopian Prophecies Are Coming True - The Government Will Soon Choose Our Wives
Thinking of this entertaining new literary award – “the Hatchet Job of the Year” – it was natural to turn to Macaulay’s Essays, for few reviewers have ever been less reluctant to wound. I had in mind two long review-essays, one on Robert Montgomery’s Poems, the other on The State in its relations with ...
Ken Clarke is ready to betray 800 years of British justice (Henry Porter - The Guardian)
The security and justice green paper threatens to deprive us of one of the vital traditions of common law. First, the UK Bill of Rights Commission: has anyone seen it? Are we quite sure it exists in corporeal form? Do we know where its members meet? How come people are forming the impression that the UK Bill of Rights Commission is doing rather less for the public good than a ...
Labour See The Light As Ed Balls Slaps Down Leftie Flat Earthers - Dan Hodges, Daily Telegraph
Ed Miliband began the week talking about tough decisions. Ed Balls has ended the week taking them. His announcement to today’s Fabian conference that he is backing a public sector pay freeze was bold in itself. But coupled with the briefing to this morning’s papers that Labour will not automatically oppose any of the Coalition cuts.
Global Warming - Climaytologists Issue A Grovelling Apology - NOT - James Delingpole.
I've just been listening to BBC Radio 4's More Or Less. It was the episode announcing that the Global Warming Policy Foundation's scientific adviser Dr David Whitehouse had won a £100 bet made on the programme four years ago with climatologist Dr James Annan. Annan predicted temperatures would rise in that period; Whitehouse predicted they wouldn't. Annan lost.
Scare Story Du Jour
Today it is scary smart phones that cause us harm.
But people become so obsessive about checking their email accounts and social networking sites that they actually become more stressed as a result, researchers said. ...
The Truth Is Out There
Sorry to pinch the X Files tag line, but getting the truth out of lobby groups and indolent media hacks really can be as exhaustive as discovering alien encounters these days. They still leave little clues lying around, mind. Like this, from Sunday's BBC article on incorrigible gin-soaked pensioners ...
Wannabe Tyrant Obama's Contempt For Constitution May Yet Prove His Undoing
One reason so many Americans entrusted Barack Obama with the presidency was his pledge to correct the prior administration's tendency to push unilateral executive power beyond constitutional and customary limits. Yet last week's recess appointments of ...
Your wits may begin to deteriorate after the age of 40, but you never lose your wisdom
SWe stared at one another, he and I. In the middle of the crowded drinks party we stood squinting and racking our brains for the answer as to why the other’s face looked so familiar. The mutual embarrassment was palpable: we were both over 40 and had ...
A Science Fan's Guide To The US Republican Candidates
It must be tricky, sometimes, being a sensible US conservative. You have a reasonable belief in small government, low taxes and the free market. You might have moral stances on family issues or welfare. But, for some reason ...
Why Is Britain Ramping Up Sanctions Against Iran
Sabre-rattling at Washington's behest is an idiocy, and likely to do little other than escalate the steps to open conflict. Britain is out of Iraq and desperate to get out of Afghanistan. So why gird ourselves for a fight with Iran, a proud country of 75 million people with whom we cannot go to war without taking leave of our senses?
When exam boards speenfeed answers to children there is no hope for education.
The truly extraordinary thing about the latest exam board scandal is that the board in question felt it necessary to help children cheat. That is to say, the WJEC thought the questions it was setting in its GCSE exam in Information and Communications Technology were so difficult that children would only be able to cope if the answers were provided to their teachers in advance ...
Markets Are About To Make A Monkey Out Of Sarkozy
When is Nicolas Sarkozy going to wake up and smell the café au lait? As recently as yesterday, he was crowing about his "victory" over David Cameron, claiming the British Prime Minister had behaved like a "kid" at last week's EU summit. "No other country supported him, which is ...
Filling Your Face With Popcorn Is Not A Human Right
Not the usual teaser here but a warning this link goes to a post full of the most vile, neo Nazi, authoritarian, illiberal control freakery the vile fasdcists of the "progressive left" have come up with yet. It is your duty to read it and then kill a lefty. Longrider thinks so too.
Durban Climate Change Conference Produces Last Minute Deal As Nations Agree To Do Something Soon.
Climate change talks have been rescued from the brink of collapse by a last minute “huddle” between the EU and India to create an “historic deal to save the planet”. (~Not China and Russia then. Oh well, today's agreement is tomorrow's recycled toilet paper.
Nanny State Arsehole Of The Day
Via Chris Snowdon, this.
So should the State dictate how many sausage butties I have for breakfast? Should the Health Minister be e-mailing me about my five-a-day broccoli and bananas? Yes and yes. Because my “freedom” has ...
European Treatly Changes Will Not Prevent Disaster
Quite rightly, there is a lot of excitement about David Cameron’s decision not to sign up to the new treaty, and the decision of the other EU member states to go ahead and do it without us. But it seems to me that the events of last night don’t so much change things, as makes…
Rise Of The Pseudo - Idiots
There is only one thing more irritating than the pseudo-intellectual. And that’s the pseudo-idiot. We’ve all seen them. The Oxbridge graduates who claim to hate culture. The accountants who pretend to enjoy paintballing. The nerds who boast about all the time they spend in the pub. There is something desperately immature about pseudo-idiots. They seem…
Markets Are About To Make A Monkey Out Of Sarkozy
When is Nicolas Sarkozy going to wake up and smell the café au lait? As recently as yesterday, he was crowing about his "victory" over David Cameron, claiming the British Prime Minister had behaved like a "kid" at last week's EU summit. "No other country supported him, which is ...
Filling Your Face With Popcorn Is Not A Human Right
Not the usual teaser here but a warning this link goes to a post full of the most vile, neo Nazi, authoritarian, illiberal control freakery the vile fasdcists of the "progressive left" have come up with yet. It is your duty to read it and then kill a lefty. Longrider thinks so too.
Durban Climate Change Conference Produces Last Minute Deal As Nations Agree To Do Something Soon.
Climate change talks have been rescued from the brink of collapse by a last minute “huddle” between the EU and India to create an “historic deal to save the planet”. (~Not China and Russia then. Oh well, today's agreement is tomorrow's recycled toilet paper.
Nanny State Arsehole Of The Day
Via Chris Snowdon, this.
So should the State dictate how many sausage butties I have for breakfast? Should the Health Minister be e-mailing me about my five-a-day broccoli and bananas? Yes and yes. Because my “freedom” has ...
European Treatly Changes Will Not Prevent Disaster
Quite rightly, there is a lot of excitement about David Cameron’s decision not to sign up to the new treaty, and the decision of the other EU member states to go ahead and do it without us. But it seems to me that the events of last night don’t so much change things, as makes…
Rise Of The Pseudo - Idiots
There is only one thing more irritating than the pseudo-intellectual. And that’s the pseudo-idiot. We’ve all seen them. The Oxbridge graduates who claim to hate culture. The accountants who pretend to enjoy paintballing. The nerds who boast about all the time they spend in the pub. There is something desperately immature about pseudo-idiots. They seem…
US Debt Talk Collapse As Obama Scores Political Points
The collapse of talks to cut America’s huge deficit reveals the chasm between the Republicans and Democrats. Politically, the winner of this debacle is Barack Obama, who will blame the Republicans for refusing to agree to significant tax increases. But the real loser is the American taxpayer ...
Post Normal Science
As the memories of the Soviet Union and Mao's China fade, a new generation of Marxists has materialized. Still-living members of the old generation are keeping the faith. How can anyone be a Marxist given the Marxist horrors of the 20th century? It could be jealousy, rebelliousness, primordial archetypes, indulgent child-rearing, or a college education. Ask a shrink. Marxists use front groups and front causes to hide their true intentions. This is like the movies, where aliens disguise themselves as humans until they expose their true bodies -- bodies that feature ...
Privacy 2 (A look at the effect of digital technology on privacy)
First though, its important to understand Jonathan Zittrain's concept of 'Privacy 2.0'. And why is this included in the 'Ammo' series? Simply because our conceptions of privacy are outdated - scholars and technologists such as Zittrain and his peers (such as Morozov, Benkler etc) are beginning to provide immensely useful analyses and concepts for understanding the brave new digital world we find ourselves in. The powers that be, including the ...
To Get Out Of Recession Britain Must Lead The Way In Green Technology Says Shill For Expensive Science
The only way Britain can get out of the economic crisis is to invest in the development of new technology, according to Simon Singh, one of Britain's most respected science writers. All this proves is science fans are out of touch with reality.
Only A Totalitarian New World Order Can Save Us
Canadian leftie and author of No Logo, Naomi Klein has a solution to climate change and it goes like this: punitive taxation; massive wealth re-distribution; the abolition of free trade and free markets; a state-enforced end to to the “cult of shopping”; the whole to be supervised by a New World Order of selfless illuminati (who presumably resemble Ms Klein... Nice to see the left are coming out of thir neo Nazi closet
As Euronazis Call For More Integration, EWU Nations Are Starting To Hate Each Other
My friend Denis MacShane can never be accused of a loss of nerve. Sticking unfailingly to the Europhile line, he is reiterating the unreconstructed received wisdom on the break-up of the euro. On Radio 5 Live this morning, he warned against what he presumably sees as the triumph of the Eurosceptic argument. “If we don’t make any case…
McKinsey Trampled On The Rain Forests, How Can It Be Trusted To Advise Governments.
The firm consulting on the NHS shake-up has given advice on forest protection that benefits only big business. Its secrecy is causing concern. The world's most influential management consultany (motto: "If it can be measured it can be managed") is a favourite adviser of big government, big finance and big business. And no wonder; the advice they give always seems to be what the client most wants to hear.
It Was Not Just One Man Who Killed Michael Jackson - Christina Patterson, The Independent
People said, while crying in front of cameras, that there had, at long last, been what their banners had demanded: "Justice for Michael!". His mother agreed. "I feel," she told reporters, "better now." Everyone seemed to. Everyone – apart, perhaps, from Conrad Murray, and his defence lawyers, and maybe some of the women who claimed to be his girlfriend, and maybe some of the mothers of some of his children – seemed to feel an awful lot better now ...
Save Us From Self Important Nurses With Degrees Wjho Care More About Their Carers Than Their Patients
Picture this: an elderly patient lies immobile in a hospital bed. She’s thirsty but cannot reach the mug of water the nurse left on her bedside table. Her body hurts – bedsores are developing because she has not been able to turn in her bed. And she feels lonely: she’s outlived her husband and friends,…
Osborne Tells Anti Banking Wankers The Truth About The Tobin Tax
The clip in Nick Robinson’s report last night was great, but the full thing is even better. If you haven’t got round to it yet, here’s George Osborne’s demolition of the Tobin Tax in full at Ecofin yesterday ...
The Gift Of Good Grammar
And so the relentlessly triumphant private schools go marching on… Not by doing anything particularly exceptional, but by doing the bleeding obvious. This time, it’s St Paul’s Girls’ School, in Hammersmith. Already, it’s one of the best schools in the country, and now it’s going one step further by insisting on grammar lessons for all…
The Euro Crisis Is Eroding Democracy Charles Crawford- The Daily Telegraph.
The eurozone crisis is eroding our democracy. How do we withdraw our consent from being governed like this? Answering yet another questionnaire a few years ago on FCO processes, I trenchantly wrote that such exercises missed a key point: that much of the underlying logic of foreign policy work was in fact about supporting British Parliamentary democracy. Seen from ...
Pete Townshend Says Apple Is A Digital Vampire]
Pete Townshend has called on iTunes owner Apple to do more to support musicians "whose work it bleeds like a digital vampire Northern Rock".The Who star used a radio industry lecture on Monday evening to call for Apple, now run by Tim Cook, should employ A&R executives to spot new talent and provide financial and creative support to emerging artists. Townshend also hit out at ...
Comrade Cameron cheerleading for Big Brother
In his role of International Socialist pretending to be a Conservative, comrade David Cameron will present a report on Global Governance to the G20 in Cannes at the invitation of Comrade Sarkozy. Quote from the “Joint letter of President Van Rompuy and President Barroso on the G20 Summit in Cannes” which outlines the agenda. "Improving global governance. Finally, we look forward to discussing the proposals contained in the report by ..."
Did George Orwell Predict The Euro Folly
The subject of Europe, alas for David Cameron, is not going away. Iain Duncan Smith has warned that he will not vote against his Eurosceptic principles again, while campaigners have launched a second petition to have a referendum discussed in Parliament. As Old Holborn puts it: “Aw, they didn’t do what we asked them to.…
How The 1% Got Richer While The 99% got poorer
The just-released Congressional Budget Office report, Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007, supports a basic claim of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement sweeping the country: that deep economic inequality is corrupting politics, culture and American society as ...
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debt crisis ]
Would A Computer Outsmart You?
When you chat to your mates online, are you sure they are not machines? If you're not, maybe you've entered some Gibsonian cyberspace inhabited by an artificial intelligence (AI), or maybe you should think about getting new chat mates. Alan Turing set out this challenge in 1950 based on a Victorian "imitation game", in which competitors had to work out if they were communicating with a hidden man or woman. Turing reckoned that, if a program could convince people it was a human, it was to all intents and purposes thinking. He predicted that machines would easily pass the Turing test by the year 2000, but none has even come close. The Loebner prize exposes this failure and is boycotted by ...
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Will computers ever match humans ] ... [
IBM to build a 'human' computer? ]]
Euro Armageddon
There’s a good reason no one makes disaster movies about financial crises. In disaster movies, there is always a solution which a crack team of miners/scientists/politicians can get to work on, just as soon as one boffin has explained it. The obstacles are horrendous, but they’re simple (we have to get past that yeti, etc).…
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eurogeddon ]
Gadaffi Comes To Westminster
The Tories are revolting! Amid major threats of a mulity in the ranks over David Cameron's imposition of a whip on the debate about whether we should have a reerendum on whether Britain stasys in the EU or deserts the sinking ship. As opposition in the party grew Cameron did a very passable impersonation of recently deceased third world tyrant Mumammar Gaddafi by threatening to sack Conservative junior ministers that in a one man one vote system he was the man who had the one vote.Over to you Mr. Farage.
It's the sovereignty, stupid
Obama's connections to organised crime resurface
“During its 15 years in New York City, ACORN has helped squatters claim derelict city-owned property, forced bankers to invest in low-income communities, and organized a war against the city’s workfare program. It’s also developed a reputation for no-holds-barred tactics—getting results through adversarial campaigns against bankers, politicians and ...
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Obama corruption scandal ]
Dawkins Was Cowardly To Refuse Debate
Finally, Richard Dawkins has given his reasons for refusing to debate the American theologian William Lane Craig. We have waited a long time for this. The invitation to discuss the existence of God at Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre was extended to Dawkins many months ago. Craig is an excellent speaker who has made mincemeat out of…
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Principled agnosticism ] ... [
Athist civilization condemned ]
Health Experts Pathetic and Stupid
Actually “pathetic and stupid” is how “health expert” Professor Philip James, from the delightfully named “International Association for the Study of Obesity” described the government’s health strategy, announced yesterday. Prof James went on to say that the junk food industry “manipulated” individuals into consuming their products and that was why legislation was needed.Hmmm would the “International Association for the Study of Obesity” be the same group that has been accused of taking millions of pounds from drug companies who make …..oh….. anti-obesity drugs ... ?
Common Sense not Sociology Will Improve Diets
That’s the idea: the Anderson family with their homegrown vegetables (Photo: Kevin Holt) Who’d be a parent? First one study from the Universities of Pennsylvania and Appalachian States claims to indicate that children who are nagged to eat their vegetables actually eat less of them. Now another piece of research from Babraham Institute in Cambridge…
The Perfect British Loaf
Perfect toast: have a look at this. Below is a Sherston loaf from Hobbs House bakery in the Cotswolds turned into a “toaster”. This the bakery’s most popular loaf. The bread is made using the overnight sponge method, which allows the dough to ferment slowly and develop flavour. This traditional sponge-and-dough, two-stage process is relatively…
Economists Are Such Idealists
It’s not just Labour politicians who have been laying into David Cameron’s conference speech that “the only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts”, or his claim that the Government’s austerity programme has given the country record low interest rates. Labour has got plenty of heavyweight support from the economics…
Labour's Voodoo Economics
Ever since losing the election, Labour has been running the argument that deficit reduction is counter-productive, since raising taxes and cutting spending crimps growth and therefore actually increases the size of the deficit rather than reducing it. In the wake of this week’s alarming unemployment figures, both Ed Milliband and Ed Balls have been turning…
Australia Commits Suicide
One of the worst aspects of living in these apocalyptic times is that whenever you look around the world, wondering where you might escape to, you begin to realise that everywhere else is just as bad if not worse. Take Australia, an island built on fossil fuel with an economy dependent on fossil fuel. What ...
Is The Internet Sexist?
Will Hutton woke me up with a bang this morning. Or rather, the vice-chairman of the Work Foundation made me sit up in bed when he shared his startling insight on women’s unemployment with listeners of the Today programme. As David Cameron’s feminist critics have been pointing out for months now, the Coalition cuts have…
Why The Slump In Living Standards Could Be A Good Thing - Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph
OK, so the headline was written to provoke, but from a macro-economic point of view, there is a sense in which the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ finding of the longest slump in household finances on record is actually a quite positive development. How come? It can surely never be a good thing for living standards to…
How Can We Stop Another Great Depression
When a man like Steve Keen says the trillions spent on refinancing the banks has truly stuffed us, we really should listen. I cannot claim to have understood everything in the lecture: Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu theory and the 41-line differential equation were approximately 15.8 metres over my head. But the points I grasped were clear enough. We're stuffed: stuffed to a degree that scarcely anyone yet appreciates ...
Taxman Ignores The Mega Rich To Go After Miss Whiplash - Ian Cowie
Private tutors, lifestyle coaches and even providers of ‘personal services’ are, accountants claim, among the latest groups to be targeted by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) for non-payment of tax. Following similar ‘pay up or else’ ultimatums issued to plumbers, dentists and other occupations where tax evasion is suspected, HMRC is setting a new deadline…
Can A Biomass Boiler Keep Your Home Warm
Julian Morrison is a developer with a powerful interest in energy conservation. His restored and extended house, the Ginny Ring, on the Llangollen Canal at St Martin’s Moor near Oswestry in Shropshire, is a kind of love affair with wood. “It is made largely of oak, and the extension is timber frame made of oak,” he says. Windows, doors, curtain poles and stairs were all handmade by a local craftsman. But the pièce de résistance is the biomass gasification boiler, kept like a hungry beast in an ...
Who Is More Obsessed With Satanic Sex, The Church Or The Politically Correct Left?
A subtle rewriting of history is taking place on the back of the Amanda Knox acquittal. Reading feminist commentary on the case, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Catholic Church and its weird obsession with Satanic cults are ultimately to blame for Knox’s sorrows. Apparently, the Church, being stuck in the fifteenth century,…
If Creativity Can Lead To Madness Why Do We Offer Art Therapy?
I was recently at a fundraising dinner for Mind, the leading mental health charity in the UK. One of the big themes for the evening (other than Stephen Fry’s investiture as president), was the idea of art as therapy. My only qualifications to write about therapy and mental illness are a rather lame 2:1 in ...
Obama looks stupid as he lectures Germany on financial management
Germany’s finance minister Wolfang Schauble has launched a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration after Washington pushed for the European Union to boost its EFSF bail out fund. After Obama declared that the European financial crisis is “scaring the world”, Schauble shot back at the US president by warning: “It’s always …
LHC and the search for the Higgs Boson
The Large Hadron Collider’s search for the Higgs boson – the theoretical particle that is believed to give all matter in the universe mass – is, according to physicists, entering its last phase. At some point in the next few months, perhaps as soon as December, we will know: either it exists in the form that ...
The Shallow Anti Americanism Of US Liberals
There are few subjects that provoke as much smug condescension and shallow anti-Americanism as the death penalty in the United States. And the “debate” over the execution in Georgia last Wednesday of Troy Davis, 42, convicted of the 1989 murder of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer, marked a new low. The sheer emotionalism and partisanship…
The Really Really Fast Show
A 450-mile journey lasting less than 2.4 thousandths of a second has, we are told, disproved Einstein's theory of special relativity. Tom Peck seeks expert guidance in an attempt to understand what this actually means ...
Watermelons vs Shale Gas
God knows we could all do with some good news right now. And as it happens, from Oop North near Blackpool this week, we had good news in spades. Sure, it was known Britain was sitting on some pretty sizeable shale gas deposits. What hadn’t been announced before though, was just how sizeable.
Quantitative Easing Failed - Why Are Economists Demanging More?
The IMF’s figures are pitilessly clear. The countries which decreed the biggest bailouts and stimulus package, the countries which printed the most money, are suffering the slowest growth. The Bank of England’s ‘quantitative easing’ was, in proportionate terms, bigger even than the Fed’s. Result? Our inflation rate is higher than our competitors’, our economy commensurately…
Science Fiction Is Not Just Fantasy
Britain doesn’t have enough young people becoming scientists and engineers. It’s a familiar refrain heard from politicans on both sides of the aisle, not to mention eminent scientists and most recently, Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman. There’s plenty of blame to go around for this apparent decline, whether it’s the glittering lure of the financial sector ...
Socialists May Be Clever But They're Not Humble
Guido Fawkes reported recently that Polly Toynbee told the Edinburgh Book Show that left-wing people were both more intelligent and generally better people than others. I am happy to admit immediately that it is likely that left-wing people are more intelligent than liberals and conservatives – though the causality is in the other direction. In his final book ...
Dedicated To Lucifer An appraisal of the work of Saul Alinsky the American seditionist and black supremacist.
Young River
A nature poem describing the delicate balance of any environment.
Obama's "Jobs" Bill gives shitloads of money to black seditionists
ACORN and other radical left-wing groups would be eligible for up to $15 billion in federal funding if President Obama’s new economic stimulus package becomes law. Now that public polling shows Americans are realizing that economic stimulus programs don’t work, the Obama administration is calling ...
Is the EDL the new voice of the white working class?
By Damian Thompson - Daily Telegraph
From Saturday’s Daily Telegraph There’s a YouTube video doing the rounds which “anti-fascist” campaigners against the English Defence League don’t want you to see. It features a couple of young middle-class supporters of Unite Against Fascism sniggering as one of them describes a “horrible tattooed woman” at a demo being punched in the face “before…
American Liberals Selective Anti Semitism
I was horrified by reports that a powerful congressman, Henry Waxman, had said that Jews in New York’s ninth congressional district voted against President Barack Obama “to protect their wealth.” Could the obsession with backing Obama have led a leading Jewish politician to make such a stereotypical antisemitic remark? ...
Jenkins' delivers right hook to Federasts - Raewawld
If you want three minutes of genuine pleasure this morning, read through Simon Jenkins' denunciation of European Federalism in the Guardian. In a piece that must leave many Guardianistas choking on their nut Muesli today, Jenkins says ...
Health Scare Story Du Jour - Mark Wadsworrh
Drinking alcohol can increase your risk of cancer because ethanol is itself a carcinogen on certain parts of the body, scientists have found. Researchers said they found that when ethanol is ...
Who Is This Idiot (clue: it's not the guy from It's A Knockout - Tim Worstall
Having looked him up, apparently he’s something like the Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Open University. And entirely ignorant to boot: [ ... ] As an analysis of neoliberalism that’s a pretty good coq au vin recipe. That is, it has entirely fuck all to do with the subject under discussion.
Spongebob Squarepants is a health risk? - Divck Puddlecote
The Sun carried an article today on the dangers of Spongebob Squarepants. Yes, you read that correctly, the dangers of ... Spongebob Squarepants. I suspect the currant bun just wanted to raise a few hackles amongst its readers - and perhaps a derisory expletive or two - at the expense of people who would suggest such a thing. They are lagging behind the
Cibvilisation: Progress Or Decline
From the very first mankind has held the belief that it is superior to the animal kingdom. Mankind learned from nature how to hunt, how to survive and lived within the rules of nature. Mankind utilised his mind making many discoveries about the world he lives in ...
Why Are Trans Fats Still Legal?
The trans fats in junk food are responsible for the deaths of around 7,000 people a year in the UK – and teenagers are most at risk. Elsewhere, these toxic substances are banned. So why are they still legal in this country?
Not The Missing Link Again Daily Telegraph top boring fucker science writer Tom Chivers reports on a newly discoverd fossil that may be from the earliest ancestor of humans but appeals to sciece wriyters to stop using the phrase "mssing link." In the comment thread (better than the post) readers appeal to scientists like Tom to stop wasting time and money on the irrelevant. Once therewere monkeys, now there are humans (and a sub human species called science tits) How we go from monkeys to humans, (if indeed we did) does not matter.
Our Labour Market Paradox
The UK labour market is deeply dysfunctional. Today, the Telegraph reported that there are three major cities where around a third of the homes contain adults that have never had a job. That is not an unemployment rate. No, it is something much worse. It is an unemployable rate. It is a number that tells us ...
Let's not be suckered into following Obama's lead
By Jeremy Warner - Daily Telegraph
Obama says reflate, and Osborne up yours – we are sticking to Plan A. That broadly summarises the juxtaposition of Barack Obama’s new $447bn plan for growth and what the UK Chancellor, George Osborne, said at Chatham House this morning. Christine Lagarde, the new managing director of the IMF, was speaking at Chatham House too,…
Google Is Bad For The Environment
Google's carbon footprint is larger than those of 61 states and islands, it has been revealed after the company released its environmental figures for the first time yesterday.
Are machines Living Things
In NetFuture #132 I wrote about recent experiments with rats. ... round of our ongoing dialogue. For the previous installment, see NetFuture #130. SLT ... Of course no human knows what a rat thinks or feels, but with implants we actually ... Every organism strives to express its own wholeness; its health entails being more or ...
HMRC Loonytons economics - Nothing To Declare
HMRC sell seized vehicles for an average of 66 pence each! HMRC have got it wrong ... surely? l mean, they must have ... right?
Look at this FOI request ...
It's September, It Must Be The Euro - Raewald
Back on 17th June, in the halcyon days of our glorious Summer, I wrote: Our masters in Brussels would rather see the entire European economy stagnate and economic activity shrink to a dribble before they'll surrender, but the truth apparent to all is that no nation will be able ...
When Did Free Speech Die
Why has this country become so intolerant of civilised, grown-up debate? Voltaire’s classic dictum that you may disagree with what someone says but defend to the death his right to say it has withered and died. When David Starkey uttered provocative remarks about young black men in the wake of last month’s riots, his critics ...
Why Are Poor White Boys Doing Badly At School?
When social scientists try to explain something, they look at all kinds of factors they can measure. Take education. You could try to explain variations in pupils’ results by looking at their parents class or wealth or education. Or we might look at school performance, teacher quality, class sizes and so on. Social researchers don’t like saying…
It's Depressing That The Right To Die Has Become A Cause Celibre
These days, the only time you hear the word “autonomy” said with any vigour, with heartfelt oomph, is in relation to assisted suicide. In every other area of life, the idea of moral autonomy has taken a beating in recent years. Parental autonomy is continually blitzed by know-it-all politicos and supernannies who want to subject…
Climate Scepticism Is The New Racism
Climate scepticism is the new racism, Al Gore has told an interviewer. And do you know what? He’s absolutely right. Just as “racist” has been honed over the decades by liberal-lefties for casual use as a deadly weapon against anyone who disagrees them, so “climate denier” has become the new leftist shorthand for “evil, wrong, uncaring,…
Climate scepticism is the new racism, Al Gore has told an interviewer. And do you know what? He’s absolutely right. Just as “racist” has been honed over the decades by liberal-lefties for casual use as a deadly weapon against anyone who disagrees them, so “climate denier” has become the new leftist shorthand for “evil, wrong, uncaring,…
What Next For Libya
Human rights abuses, cronyism, massive amounts of taxpayer money gone in dubious circumstances, "difficult" people assassinated, law book thrown out when it suits the leader, excessive force used by power-crazed cops, bizarre political decisions, countrywide surveillance of its citizens, strange associations with foreign governments, people gaoled on a whim, and massive corruption. But enough about the UK. This is about New Libya ...
How Statism Has Come To Dominate The Churchby Ed West, Daily Telegraph
On Saturday my colleague Damian Thompson noted that it has been another fantastic academic year for my alma mater, the highly successful Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in west Kensington. The Vaughan is that rare thing – a London state school that has managed to maintain the ethos and culture of the pre-Anthony Crosland era, with teachers…
Barack Obama Is Powrless He Might As Well Stay On The Beach
The first I knew of President Obama’s decision to holiday on Martha’s Vineyard for a third successive year was when the car rental folk told me that all they had for August were SUVs at a thousand dollars a week, his entourage having bagged the rest. We’ve been coming here, off and on, since American friends introduced us to the island during a sabbatical year at next-door Harvard. I imagine that Obama comes, like Bill Clinton before him, because it seems ...
Evil As A Common GoalFifty years ago, in August 1961, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment that changed our understanding of the human propensity for evil for ever. Participants were invited into his laboratory at Yale, supposedly for a study looking at the effects of ...
Why we need a moral panic over last week's riots by Ed West, Daily Telegraph
The Economist’s Bagehot suggests that we shouldn’t get our knickers in a twist about the riots, quoting previous examples of moral panic about social disorder, crime and youth culture to show that last week’s events are nothing new. He cites articles about “young delinquents” in 1913, 1956 headlines about “rock’n’roll babies” and even reports from 1815,…
I'm Entitled # 2
Under the European Convention for Human Rights, these as written, are the fundamental ones you and I are entitled to. They mainly come from legislation that began in the United Kingdom. We invented Human Rights. However, our judiciary are hideously guilty of misinterpreting those rights. It really does ...
Starkey, Racism and The Underclass
Anyone who has met a white working-class lad or lass aged between 11 and 19 will know that David Starkey had a point when he said, rather crudely, that white chavs “have become black”. One of the curiosities of the gym that I go to in Lambeth in South London is that all the white…
Bisin Makes Burgers That Never Go Off
Let me introduce you to bisin. No, not a herd of cattle (spelling, guys!). This is a magic ingredient, that will, it is claimed keep food “fresh” for months, years even. Never heard of it? You’re not the only one. It’s a substance so new that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Bisin was discovered…
Obama The Most Unpopular President Ever?
Gallup’s latest numbers are a real eye-opener. The polling company now has Barack Obama’s approval rating at just 39 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, and down 13 percentage points since the start of June. Gallup finds that 54 percent of Americans now disapprove of the president’s job performance. And according to the RealClear…
Are PCs becoming obsolete
On the 30th anniversary of a key computer, the era of the PC is coming to an end, according to one of the IBM designers who worked on the first model
Cameron's Speech On Riots Focuses On Responsibility
With parliament recalled from recess, David Cameron stood at the despatch box to stamp out a crisis. Cameron's statement went on for almost three hours today but set the right tone of repugnance at recent events combined with a determiniation to tackle the decay in social values. To be fair Ed Milliband's response was equally sober and on target and free from any hint of the political points scoring we associate with politicians in opposition.
Riots: Left and Right look for simple answers
It’s the welfare state! It’s the cuts! It’s Labour subsidising single mothers! It’s Thatcher undermining society! It’s Left, it’s Right, it’s liberal intelligentsia, it’s conservative callousness, it’s Their Fault, it’s Their Fault, it’s Their Fault. Humanity is a tribal species, and it’s entirely natural that we lump ourselves into groups. Our brains are evolved organs, and…
The Intellectual Bankruptcy Of The Progressive Left
Last night’s high-octane encounter between Harriet Harman and Michael Gove is well worth watching. Not just as a piece of political theatre, but because of what it says about the “progressive” Left. Harriet is someone clearly able to handle a high level of cognitive dissonance. Someone who who says “the government must insist on…
Green Sprouts On Drought
Climate: WG2 Duncan Green is head of research at Oxfam GB and has written an article exploring the question of whether the drought in the Horn of Africa is caused by climate change. The article is here and an edited version appears at the Guardian. I'm sure that comment will be ...
[
World Water Problem]
Eurogeddon Postponed Again
Euroggedon is postponed again. Jean-Claude Trichet has saved civilization. There will not be a spiralling bond crisis in Italy and Spain in early August after all. An imminent disintegration of Europe’s financial system has been averted. On balance, this is good, though not optimal. (Lancing the boil immediately by organising an orderly German exit from EMU would be better: it would halt the ...
[
Eurogeddon]
The heart miracle scam revisited Velvet glove, Iron fist blog
One of the more blatant scientific scams of recent years has been the heart miracle phenomenon, in which tobacco control campaigners create studies showing a dramatic fall in heart attacks after smoking bans. It began when Stanton Glantz of Americans for Nonsmokers' Right announced the 'Helena miracle' in 2003, claiming a 60% drop in heart attacks after the ...
The dawning of a new age - Raewald
There are two cogent opinion pieces, both in the Telegraph, this morning that usefully summarise where we are. Peter Oborne catalogues the reasons for our dilemma and the failure of an adequate political response whilst Janet Daley reasons that State (or Super State) engineered redistribution of wealth has virtually killed ...
Keep Repeating The Lie And It Will Become The Truth
Shortly after the inauguration in 2009, Rham Emmanuel uttered what has come to be regarded as one of the signature lines of the Obama administration: “You never want to let a good crisis go to waste, because you have a chance to make things the way that you want them to be.” Spoken like a good, solid Democratic Socialist. Castro would’ve been proud.
Well, we certainly have a legitimate crisis in front of us ...
Can A Biomass Boiler Keep Your Home Warm
Julian Morrison is a developer with a powerful interest in energy conservation. His restored and extended house, the Ginny Ring, on the Llangollen Canal at St Martin’s Moor near Oswestry in Shropshire, is a kind of love affair with wood. “It is made largely of oak, and the extension is timber frame made of oak,” he says. Windows, doors, curtain poles and stairs were all handmade by a local craftsman. But the pièce de résistance is the biomass gasification boiler, kept like a hungry beast in an ...
Who Is More Obsessed With Satanic Sex, The Church Or The Politically Correct Left?
A subtle rewriting of history is taking place on the back of the Amanda Knox acquittal. Reading feminist commentary on the case, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Catholic Church and its weird obsession with Satanic cults are ultimately to blame for Knox’s sorrows. Apparently, the Church, being stuck in the fifteenth century,…
If Creativity Can Lead To Madness Why Do We Offer Art Therapy?
I was recently at a fundraising dinner for Mind, the leading mental health charity in the UK. One of the big themes for the evening (other than Stephen Fry’s investiture as president), was the idea of art as therapy. My only qualifications to write about therapy and mental illness are a rather lame 2:1 in ...
Obama looks stupid as he lectures Germany on financial management
Germany’s finance minister Wolfang Schauble has launched a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration after Washington pushed for the European Union to boost its EFSF bail out fund. After Obama declared that the European financial crisis is “scaring the world”, Schauble shot back at the US president by warning: “It’s always …
LHC and the search for the Higgs Boson
The Large Hadron Collider’s search for the Higgs boson – the theoretical particle that is believed to give all matter in the universe mass – is, according to physicists, entering its last phase. At some point in the next few months, perhaps as soon as December, we will know: either it exists in the form that ...
The Shallow Anti Americanism Of US Liberals
There are few subjects that provoke as much smug condescension and shallow anti-Americanism as the death penalty in the United States. And the “debate” over the execution in Georgia last Wednesday of Troy Davis, 42, convicted of the 1989 murder of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer, marked a new low. The sheer emotionalism and partisanship…
The Really Really Fast Show
A 450-mile journey lasting less than 2.4 thousandths of a second has, we are told, disproved Einstein's theory of special relativity. Tom Peck seeks expert guidance in an attempt to understand what this actually means ...
Watermelons vs Shale Gas
God knows we could all do with some good news right now. And as it happens, from Oop North near Blackpool this week, we had good news in spades. Sure, it was known Britain was sitting on some pretty sizeable shale gas deposits. What hadn’t been announced before though, was just how sizeable.
Quantitative Easing Failed - Why Are Economists Demanging More?
The IMF’s figures are pitilessly clear. The countries which decreed the biggest bailouts and stimulus package, the countries which printed the most money, are suffering the slowest growth. The Bank of England’s ‘quantitative easing’ was, in proportionate terms, bigger even than the Fed’s. Result? Our inflation rate is higher than our competitors’, our economy commensurately…
Science Fiction Is Not Just Fantasy
Britain doesn’t have enough young people becoming scientists and engineers. It’s a familiar refrain heard from politicans on both sides of the aisle, not to mention eminent scientists and most recently, Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman. There’s plenty of blame to go around for this apparent decline, whether it’s the glittering lure of the financial sector ...
Socialists May Be Clever But They're Not Humble
Guido Fawkes reported recently that Polly Toynbee told the Edinburgh Book Show that left-wing people were both more intelligent and generally better people than others. I am happy to admit immediately that it is likely that left-wing people are more intelligent than liberals and conservatives – though the causality is in the other direction. In his final book ...
Dedicated To Lucifer An appraisal of the work of Saul Alinsky the American seditionist and black supremacist.
Young River
A nature poem describing the delicate balance of any environment.
Obama's "Jobs" Bill gives shitloads of money to black seditionists
ACORN and other radical left-wing groups would be eligible for up to $15 billion in federal funding if President Obama’s new economic stimulus package becomes law. Now that public polling shows Americans are realizing that economic stimulus programs don’t work, the Obama administration is calling ...
Is the EDL the new voice of the white working class?
By Damian Thompson - Daily Telegraph
From Saturday’s Daily Telegraph There’s a YouTube video doing the rounds which “anti-fascist” campaigners against the English Defence League don’t want you to see. It features a couple of young middle-class supporters of Unite Against Fascism sniggering as one of them describes a “horrible tattooed woman” at a demo being punched in the face “before…
American Liberals Selective Anti Semitism
I was horrified by reports that a powerful congressman, Henry Waxman, had said that Jews in New York’s ninth congressional district voted against President Barack Obama “to protect their wealth.” Could the obsession with backing Obama have led a leading Jewish politician to make such a stereotypical antisemitic remark? ...
Jenkins' delivers right hook to Federasts - Raewawld
If you want three minutes of genuine pleasure this morning, read through Simon Jenkins' denunciation of European Federalism in the Guardian. In a piece that must leave many Guardianistas choking on their nut Muesli today, Jenkins says ...
Health Scare Story Du Jour - Mark Wadsworrh
Drinking alcohol can increase your risk of cancer because ethanol is itself a carcinogen on certain parts of the body, scientists have found. Researchers said they found that when ethanol is ...
Who Is This Idiot (clue: it's not the guy from It's A Knockout - Tim Worstall
Having looked him up, apparently he’s something like the Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Open University. And entirely ignorant to boot: [ ... ] As an analysis of neoliberalism that’s a pretty good coq au vin recipe. That is, it has entirely fuck all to do with the subject under discussion.
Spongebob Squarepants is a health risk? - Divck Puddlecote
The Sun carried an article today on the dangers of Spongebob Squarepants. Yes, you read that correctly, the dangers of ... Spongebob Squarepants. I suspect the currant bun just wanted to raise a few hackles amongst its readers - and perhaps a derisory expletive or two - at the expense of people who would suggest such a thing. They are lagging behind the
Cibvilisation: Progress Or Decline
From the very first mankind has held the belief that it is superior to the animal kingdom. Mankind learned from nature how to hunt, how to survive and lived within the rules of nature. Mankind utilised his mind making many discoveries about the world he lives in ...
Why Are Trans Fats Still Legal?
The trans fats in junk food are responsible for the deaths of around 7,000 people a year in the UK – and teenagers are most at risk. Elsewhere, these toxic substances are banned. So why are they still legal in this country?
Not The Missing Link Again Daily Telegraph top boring fucker science writer Tom Chivers reports on a newly discoverd fossil that may be from the earliest ancestor of humans but appeals to sciece wriyters to stop using the phrase "mssing link." In the comment thread (better than the post) readers appeal to scientists like Tom to stop wasting time and money on the irrelevant. Once therewere monkeys, now there are humans (and a sub human species called science tits) How we go from monkeys to humans, (if indeed we did) does not matter.
Our Labour Market Paradox
The UK labour market is deeply dysfunctional. Today, the Telegraph reported that there are three major cities where around a third of the homes contain adults that have never had a job. That is not an unemployment rate. No, it is something much worse. It is an unemployable rate. It is a number that tells us ...
Let's not be suckered into following Obama's lead
By Jeremy Warner - Daily Telegraph
Obama says reflate, and Osborne up yours – we are sticking to Plan A. That broadly summarises the juxtaposition of Barack Obama’s new $447bn plan for growth and what the UK Chancellor, George Osborne, said at Chatham House this morning. Christine Lagarde, the new managing director of the IMF, was speaking at Chatham House too,…
Google Is Bad For The Environment
Google's carbon footprint is larger than those of 61 states and islands, it has been revealed after the company released its environmental figures for the first time yesterday.
Are machines Living Things
In NetFuture #132 I wrote about recent experiments with rats. ... round of our ongoing dialogue. For the previous installment, see NetFuture #130. SLT ... Of course no human knows what a rat thinks or feels, but with implants we actually ... Every organism strives to express its own wholeness; its health entails being more or ...
HMRC Loonytons economics - Nothing To Declare
HMRC sell seized vehicles for an average of 66 pence each! HMRC have got it wrong ... surely? l mean, they must have ... right?
Look at this FOI request ...
It's September, It Must Be The Euro - Raewald
Back on 17th June, in the halcyon days of our glorious Summer, I wrote: Our masters in Brussels would rather see the entire European economy stagnate and economic activity shrink to a dribble before they'll surrender, but the truth apparent to all is that no nation will be able ...
When Did Free Speech Die
Why has this country become so intolerant of civilised, grown-up debate? Voltaire’s classic dictum that you may disagree with what someone says but defend to the death his right to say it has withered and died. When David Starkey uttered provocative remarks about young black men in the wake of last month’s riots, his critics ...
Why Are Poor White Boys Doing Badly At School?
When social scientists try to explain something, they look at all kinds of factors they can measure. Take education. You could try to explain variations in pupils’ results by looking at their parents class or wealth or education. Or we might look at school performance, teacher quality, class sizes and so on. Social researchers don’t like saying…
It's Depressing That The Right To Die Has Become A Cause Celibre
These days, the only time you hear the word “autonomy” said with any vigour, with heartfelt oomph, is in relation to assisted suicide. In every other area of life, the idea of moral autonomy has taken a beating in recent years. Parental autonomy is continually blitzed by know-it-all politicos and supernannies who want to subject…
Climate Scepticism Is The New Racism
Climate scepticism is the new racism, Al Gore has told an interviewer. And do you know what? He’s absolutely right. Just as “racist” has been honed over the decades by liberal-lefties for casual use as a deadly weapon against anyone who disagrees them, so “climate denier” has become the new leftist shorthand for “evil, wrong, uncaring,…
Climate scepticism is the new racism, Al Gore has told an interviewer. And do you know what? He’s absolutely right. Just as “racist” has been honed over the decades by liberal-lefties for casual use as a deadly weapon against anyone who disagrees them, so “climate denier” has become the new leftist shorthand for “evil, wrong, uncaring,…
What Next For Libya
Human rights abuses, cronyism, massive amounts of taxpayer money gone in dubious circumstances, "difficult" people assassinated, law book thrown out when it suits the leader, excessive force used by power-crazed cops, bizarre political decisions, countrywide surveillance of its citizens, strange associations with foreign governments, people gaoled on a whim, and massive corruption. But enough about the UK. This is about New Libya ...
How Statism Has Come To Dominate The Churchby Ed West, Daily Telegraph
On Saturday my colleague Damian Thompson noted that it has been another fantastic academic year for my alma mater, the highly successful Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in west Kensington. The Vaughan is that rare thing – a London state school that has managed to maintain the ethos and culture of the pre-Anthony Crosland era, with teachers…
Barack Obama Is Powrless He Might As Well Stay On The Beach
The first I knew of President Obama’s decision to holiday on Martha’s Vineyard for a third successive year was when the car rental folk told me that all they had for August were SUVs at a thousand dollars a week, his entourage having bagged the rest. We’ve been coming here, off and on, since American friends introduced us to the island during a sabbatical year at next-door Harvard. I imagine that Obama comes, like Bill Clinton before him, because it seems ...
Evil As A Common Goal
Fifty years ago, in August 1961, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment that changed our understanding of the human propensity for evil for ever. Participants were invited into his laboratory at Yale, supposedly for a study looking at the effects of ...
Why we need a moral panic over last week's riots by Ed West, Daily Telegraph
The Economist’s Bagehot suggests that we shouldn’t get our knickers in a twist about the riots, quoting previous examples of moral panic about social disorder, crime and youth culture to show that last week’s events are nothing new. He cites articles about “young delinquents” in 1913, 1956 headlines about “rock’n’roll babies” and even reports from 1815,…
I'm Entitled # 2
Under the European Convention for Human Rights, these as written, are the fundamental ones you and I are entitled to. They mainly come from legislation that began in the United Kingdom. We invented Human Rights. However, our judiciary are hideously guilty of misinterpreting those rights. It really does ...
Starkey, Racism and The Underclass
Anyone who has met a white working-class lad or lass aged between 11 and 19 will know that David Starkey had a point when he said, rather crudely, that white chavs “have become black”. One of the curiosities of the gym that I go to in Lambeth in South London is that all the white…
Bisin Makes Burgers That Never Go Off
Let me introduce you to bisin. No, not a herd of cattle (spelling, guys!). This is a magic ingredient, that will, it is claimed keep food “fresh” for months, years even. Never heard of it? You’re not the only one. It’s a substance so new that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Bisin was discovered…
Obama The Most Unpopular President Ever?
Gallup’s latest numbers are a real eye-opener. The polling company now has Barack Obama’s approval rating at just 39 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, and down 13 percentage points since the start of June. Gallup finds that 54 percent of Americans now disapprove of the president’s job performance. And according to the RealClear…
Cameron's Speech On Riots Focuses On Responsibility
With parliament recalled from recess, David Cameron stood at the despatch box to stamp out a crisis. Cameron's statement went on for almost three hours today but set the right tone of repugnance at recent events combined with a determiniation to tackle the decay in social values. To be fair Ed Milliband's response was equally sober and on target and free from any hint of the political points scoring we associate with politicians in opposition.
See also: ... [
Bread and circuses] ... [
Nanny State menu ]
Riots: Left and Right look for simple answers
It’s the welfare state! It’s the cuts! It’s Labour subsidising single mothers! It’s Thatcher undermining society! It’s Left, it’s Right, it’s liberal intelligentsia, it’s conservative callousness, it’s Their Fault, it’s Their Fault, it’s Their Fault. Humanity is a tribal species, and it’s entirely natural that we lump ourselves into groups. Our brains are evolved organs, and…
See also: [ Anarchy in the UK - and elsewhere ] ... [
Green Sprouts On Drought
Climate: WG2 Duncan Green is head of research at Oxfam GB and has written an article exploring the question of whether the drought in the Horn of Africa is caused by climate change. The article is here and an edited version appears at the Guardian. I'm sure that comment will be ...
See also: [
World Water Problem] ... [
Climate crisis menu ]
Eurogeddon Postponed Again
Euroggedon is postponed again. Jean-Claude Trichet has saved civilization. There will not be a spiralling bond crisis in Italy and Spain in early August after all. An imminent disintegration of Europe’s financial system has been averted. On balance, this is good, though not optimal. (Lancing the boil immediately by organising an orderly German exit from EMU would be better: it would halt the ...
See also: [
Eurogeddon] ... [
Central Banks Print Money But Fail To End Crisis ]
Keep Repeating The Lie And It Will Become The Truth
Shortly after the inauguration in 2009, Rham Emmanuel uttered what has come to be regarded as one of the signature lines of the Obama administration: “You never want to let a good crisis go to waste, because you have a chance to make things the way that you want them to be.” Spoken like a good, solid Democratic Socialist. Castro would’ve been proud.
Well, we certainly have a legitimate crisis in front of See also: [
Obama's econimic headache ] ... [
Obama Credibility ]
