Lordy. The BBC on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: The pact was signed by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Russian counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, in Moscow. It led to the carving-up of Poland between Nazi Germany and the USSR, as well as the annexation by the USSR of eastern Finland, […]
Lots of people are watching this. So you must too. And if you are unfortunate enough to watch the mawkish, trashy British equivalent of this show in the coming weeks, just remember what Talent is really all about – deftness, insight and moral sensibility. Show us, Kseniya Simonova:
A lot of issues are a bit like living next to a mountain which is so lofty and all-dominating that you stop noticing the vast shadow it casts, fretting over which tree gives you shade instead. Take this erudite and trenchant essay (h/t Samizdata) about the deep problems of the […]
Andrew Ian Dodge adds a further gloss in a comment on my posting below: Yep, its me. One hopes that no one would fake being me. I understand your point of view and needless to say respect it as its private "property". In any case your policy needs to be […]
Andrew Ian Dodge of the heavy metal school of politics part of the blogosphere (assuming that it is indeed that Andrew Ian Dodge) replies to my earlier posting today about the responsibility if any which bloggers have for comments posted by others on their sites: In a word no. You […]
Most of the noise generated by Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s observations on a BBC Great Lives radio programme has been linked to his words on terrorism: Asked by presenter Matthew Parris whether there were any circumstances in which terrorism was justified, Mr Miliband said: ‘Yes, there are circumstances in which […]
Matthew Cain asks whether bloggers have responsibilities for material posted on their blogs by others: If I invite you to attend a performance of my local drama club, I wouldn’t expect you to judge me by the audience. But if I invite you to my birthday party, I would expect […]
Yet more UK pupils are getting A grades at A-Level. Since on the face of it there is no evidence that our progeny are smarter than we are (and plenty pointing in exactly the opposite direction), is the only explanation that the exams are getting easier? Thus: A survey found that […]
One thing we Brits (sic) like to do (see this blog and many others) is to pore over the ethnic and other divisions in countries beyond our fog-bound shores and try to come up with ingenious outcomes for them. See eg Bosnia/Afghanistan/Kashmir/Cprus and so on and on. You name a conflict […]
So we wheezed our way up the windy hill to see the legendary White Horse near Uffington, an elegant ancient horse motif cut into the Wessex chalk uplands. When we got there, two things immediately struck us. First, the Horse is not obvious. All you can see are slender lines […]
