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Global warning

Theodore Dalrymple

Wednesday, 29th August 2007

He who would read newspapers must expect to spend his days in the darkest despair, for they contain nothing but war, murder and medical advice.

Popular wisdom, however, tells us that every cloud has a silver lining: though my experience of life leads me to conclude that, in general, the relationship between clouds and silver linings is exactly the other way around (I think Buddhists would agree). Be that as it may, I found a real reason for optimism the other day while reading the French daily, Liberation, that started out Maoist and ended up in the hands of Edouard de Rothschild.

As everyone knows, the population, thanks to its inability to control itself, and indeed its hostility to the very idea that it ought to control itself, is growing ever fatter. We in Britain, indeed, have become a nation of Nauruans, those unfortunate South-Sea islanders who suddenly gained control of immense wealth, started to eat 7,000 calories per day each while luxuriating in a life of total immobility, and ended up with the highest rate of diabetes in the world.

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A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

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The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.