A few weeks ago Michael Heseltine wiped the floor with the rest of the Question Time panel. Last night it was Paddy Ashdown’s turn to do the same. It helped, of course, that much of the programme concentrated on defence issues, about which Ashdown really does know something. But it was still an impressive performance,
Not content with one hazardous business enterprise right now, apparently Rolling Stone is going into the restaurant business. God knows why. Anyway, this allows Slate to imagine what might happen if other magazines decided to open their own restaurant. Thus… New Yorker Cafe: Although this beloved eatery professes familiarity with international cuisine, it’s best to
As David Betz says, we are “working furiously on tactical solutions to a strategic problem. It’s the second mouse strategy.” Let Mr Walken explain Afghanistan for you:
That would be a Pabst Blue Ribbon, of course, though another, better, Pre-Budget Report would be welcome too. As Fraser says, the public finances are ruined and will not be rebuilt for many years. Bill Jamieson’s piece in the Scotsman framed the matter rather well and explained why the level of debt matters more than,
Danny Finkelstein makes an obvious, if oft-ignored or forgotten, point and does so with his customary elegance: This idea of [Arthur] Laffer’s is clearly true. We don’t know what the curve (does it have a different dips for different taxes or a sharp fall near 100 per cent, say) would look like exactly and we don’t know the
Via Megan McArdle, a sentence to ponder from Tyler Cowen: One implication [of this book] is that the United States kept “small government” for an artificially long period of time, due to North-South splits and the resulting inability to agree on what a larger government should be doing. I suspect there’s something to that. The
Why do so many people hate politics? Partly because politicians insist upon making everything a matter of wearying, partisan, sillyness. Take this painting for instance. Hardly a masterpiece, not least because the young girl looks as though she knows she’s marching off to doom and that is the consequence of yet another episode of national
I’ve remarked before that Barack Obama is, in many ways, American liberalism’s long-delayed response to Ronald Reagan. This chart, found via Andrew Sullivan, comparing their Gallup approval ratings, is uncanny: Clearly, none of this is predictive, far-less guaranteeing that Obama will recover and romp to a second term as Reagan did. But what it does
So, yes, we all know that Rod Liddle’s shtick is to try and be as offensive as possible so that he can chuckle at those po-faced ninnies who dare to be offended by his courageous insistence to tell it like it really is. But like his comrades Clarkson and Littlejohn Liddle confuses being offensive with
Apologies for the light blogging these past couple of days. Still, it’s Saturday and so it’s time for some more country. Since I’m seeing him perform in Perth on Monday night it’s appropriate that Steve Earle makes another appearance in this series. And since his latest album is a set of Townes van Zandt covers
Proof that even well-intentioned and useful fads can go too far: the Grow Your Own Vegetables movement has reached a tragi-comic end with the news that Shane MacGowan, the hardest-living poet ever to emerge from the mean streets of Tunbridge Wells, is, well, this… Shane MacGowan is set to appear in a reality TV programme
Nearly! The thing is that Mrs Palin doesn’t need to pander to the nutty fringe. Many of them love her anyway. So perhaps she really does mean this sort of stuff: Speaking to the conservative talker Rusty Humphries today, Sarah Palin left the door open to speculation about President Obama’s birth certificate. “Would you make
James argues, quite correctly in my view, that it is now clear that Gordon Brown is preparing to run a campaign arguing that, as Brother Forsyth puts it, “a Cameron government will be a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.” Ben Brogan makes the same point in his column today: In
Capitalism is not in crisis everywhere. Somali pirates have launched their own stock exchange: One wealthy former pirate named Mohammed took Reuters around the small facility and said it had proved to be an important way for the pirates to win support from the local community for their operations, despite the dangers involved. “Four months
President Barack Obama speaks in Eisenhower Hall at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Photo: Roger L. Wollenberg-Pool/Getty Images The text of President Obama’s West Point address is here. I didn’t watch the speech, but having read it I think it can be summarised, broadly, as “More of the Same, Only More So”.
Like Yglesias, I guess one ought to have an official “What I Think About Obama’s Escalation in Afghanistan post”. And the truth is that I don’t know. Don’t know whether Obama’s new strategy will work, don’t know if it is wise or enough or too much or just about right. And I’m intensely suspicious of
My excellent chum Iain Martin observes that seven of the ten most recent polls have put the Tories below the “magic figure” of 40% support. The latest ComRes survey has them on 37%. Perhaps, he wonders, some of the core vote has been scunnered by the Lisbon Treaty shenanigans or perhaps some floating voters are
James is right to say that the Lib Dems’ commitment to increase the tax-free personal allowance to £10,000 trumps any obvious campaigning soundbite the Tories can offer. Isn’t that a problem? Or, to put it another way, what if the Liberal Democrats are right? On balance, I think they are. Whatever one thinks of the
This, from E.D Kain at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen is a good paragraph: Conservatism is not only about limited government, and where it seeks to limit government it does so because it sees government as a force of instability. But what about those times when government is instead a force for stability? Defense leaps
An unfortunately timed Accenture advertisement in the Wall Street Journal today: [Thanks to JNS for the heads-up and MF for the image]