Good idea. An online English grammar test over at the Guardian. But what’s this? I got one wrong!? Identify which of the following nouns are abstract and/or collective 8. Pride Abstract Collective Abstract and collective I gave the answer as being Abstract. According to the site the […]
Here is another Commentator piece from me on a subject with moral content, namely how far is it appropriate to take into account the ethnicity (or ‘race’) of would-be adopting parents? Is it right to put a child from a ‘minority’ community into a ‘white’ home? Thus: … those who […]
Over on Twitter I have been having some 140-character exchanges with erudite writer and thinker Bryan Appleyard @BryanAppleyard on the fascinating subject of how far if at all it is right to ‘gloat’ about the catastrophic plummet from grace of Chris Huhne. Bryan seemed to think that this was not […]
Over at Backbencher Lee Jenkins takes a look at some issues surrounding ‘international intervention’ from a libertarian-inclining standpoint: Yet international relations is a sphere refreshingly free of ideology. States are motivated less by values and ideals, and more by a narrow set of objectives and interests… Once you acknowledge what motivates a country’s […]
Rummaging around in some of my former work, I had another look at this piece I wrote back in November about the decline and fall of Denis MacShane: Warsaw was at least more or less normal. When I had arrived as ambassador in Bosnia in 1996 not long after the […]
Does it matter if you have a limited vocabulary? Yes it does, according to this magnificent piece by E D Hirsch Jr: Why should vocabulary size be related to achieved intelligence and real-world competence? Though the intricate details of cognitive abilities are under constant study and refinement, it’s possible to […]
My piece for The Commentator on the PM’s UK/EU speech as a speech: … Those sentences, like the opening blather about the origins of the European Union, are intended to send a strong signal to other European capitals: You won’t get a better UK Conservative leader than me who has […]
Here is my Telegraph Blogs take on The Speech: The core Cameron calculation turns on his probably shrewd calculation that the centre of gravity of the British people’s position on “Europe” is that they want Some EU, but Not Too Much. He therefore has promised them a referendum on a […]
Have the Algerian authorities messed up this ghastly crisis, by forcing a deadly showdown? One view says yes. Even if the terrorists had started killing the hostages under their control, it’s better to keep trying to talk to them to head off complete disaster. An outcome in which some terrorists […]
Wouldn’t it make life a lot easier and generally more wonderful if police people could see through your clothes to tell if you are carrying a knife? Incoming.
