A witty observation attributed to Croatia’s late President Tudjman had it that when one travelled East from Zagreb, the next properly Christian city one came to was … Manila. In other words, Croatia was (he believed) civilised Europe’s frontier with sprawling Asiatic, un-Christian despotism and cruelty. Yet as recent events have shown, maybe […]
There is to be a Special Prize for Blogs this year for the first time, under the rubric of the excellent Orwell Prize 2009. Here is what one needs to offer to be in with a chance of winning: The Orwell Prize rewards those who achieve George Orwell’s ambition ‘to make political […]
As I peruse the statistics for the readership of this Blog, I see that most people who swing by do so for less than 30 seconds, but a non-trivial number of people stay for an hour or more. It is boring scrolling back through archived blog material on any site. […]
From Balkan tabloid Kurir: Zašto stjuardese moraju da budu lepe? Da bi avion mogao da se digne! Hoho. It helps to be Serb to get it.
Tim Worstall makes an eloquent case for thinning the ranks of the stupid, once and for all.
In Brussels this week my hotel gave me a free copy of New Europe, a weekly European newspaper with a lively web presence. See eg my former colleague Sir Stephen Wall on whether Britain (sic) is a European nation. No surprise at his answer (Stephen was HM Ambassador to the […]
First Iain Dale. Then Boris Johnson. They both look forward to an Obama victory. Maybe they should read this. Or this view from Paul Rubin: Democrats draw their political power from trial lawyers, unions, government bureaucrats, environmentalists, and, perhaps, my liberal colleagues in academia. All of these voting blocs seem […]
Blogging latterly light, or to be precise nil – I have been on diplomatic training expeditions (as trainer) in Brussels and London. Interesting trying to explain to young diplomats how to set about working out how to respond in policy and media terms to a serious event. My approach: whatever […]
Via an agitated Guido, more on seeming collectivist anxiety about the impact in High Places of personal freedom . Namely Culture Secretary Andy Burnham: The time has come for perhaps a different approach to the internet," he said. "I want to even up that see-saw, even up the regulation [imbalance] […]
Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s peerless story of the man who stopped the world. The hero, a brilliant inventor called John Galt, decides to stand up against galloping collectivism and ‘go on strike’, removing his mind and personal energy from the economy. He persuades other key industrialists to follow him. They just […]
