Little to no blogging over the next few days, I’m afriad. I’m in East Lothian tonight, speaking at a St Andrews dinner, thence to Hawick to bid farewell to a cousin who is emigrating to Melbourne (an order for Boxing Day Ashes tickets has already, fear not, been placed) and then have a deadline to
Seriously. There are times when I think Americans were lucky to get George W Bush. Well, almost. Apart from the torture thing (though of course our government acquiesced with this too). [Hat-tip: 10 Downing St, via Dale]
Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and readers. In celebration, I offer this Culture11 piece on why Thanksgiving is comfortably the most civilised holiday of them all. Then again, the competition ain’t stiff, is it?
Winter sunshine.
Home. Monday afternoon. Oddly calm.
There’s something splendid about this. Brent Whelan, an American in Paris, runs, as you do, into yet another demonstration. There was the… sound truck and chants, flags and banderoles, a regular labor action. But I missed the front of the cortège where the leafleters and signs were, so I couldn’t tell what it was about. So
Roger Scruton reviews Kingsley Amis’s Everyday Drinking, now happily reissued: At the start, Amis announces certain ‘general principles’ to be followed in creating drinks, all of which can be derived, by natural drinkers’ logic, from the first of them, which holds that ‘up to a point [i.e. short of offering your guests one of those
One of the things that distinguishes a good columnist from the ordinary, run-of-the-mill shill is the ability to treat their own party’s failings as severely as they would condemn the blunders committed by the other lot. Similarly, there’s something to be said for the rigour that consistency demands. Polly Toynbee may be correct (though I’d
I’ve too much respect for my friends at The Times to ask if Rupert Murdoch dictated that this Peter Brookes cartoon appear on the paper’s front page today… The Thunderer’s leader column makes it pretty clear, I think, that the Times will not be endorsing Labour at the next election: Tony Blair and Gordon Brown
Conrad Black: The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions
Commenting on this post Ian Leslie – aka Marbury – argues that we’re on the brink of a new era and that just as Callaghan was right to appreciate that one era had ended in 1976, so Darling and El Gordo may be correct to suppose that another has been shipwrecked now. Maybe. Look, I’m
Chris Dillow – always worth your time – casts a weary eye over a number of government policies and concludes: What this shows, I think, is that New Labour’s claim to believe in technocratic, evidence-based policy is a sham. They are not technocrats at all, but either priggish moralists or cowardly panderers to mob prejudice.
I’d been meaning to write something about how all the cheering at the supposed brilliance of Obama’s cabinet picks was reminiscent of the huzzahs that greeted George W Bush’s peronnel choices. But Ezra Klein has beaten me to it: “Isn’t it amazing,” asks Krugman, “just how impressive the people being named to key positions in
Another lovely obituary from the Daily Telegraph (of course) that is, as always, written with panache: Nick Mills, who has died aged 54, was a country vet with a practice which took him across the world as an anaesthetist for wild animals, an insurance adviser to the racing industry and a “sex therapist” to thoroughbreds
I dunno. But perhaps we should try and ignore our warrior-chimp ancestry and learn from the blessed, peaceful bonobos. At least that seems to be the idea behind Sex & War: How Biology Explains War and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: another trendy but implausibly
Exciting fast food wars update: faithful reader MT alerts me to something I should have known myself. Not only is the British embassy in Tehran located on Bobby Sands Street, there is a Bobby Sands burger joint in hip and happening Tehran too. Andrew McKie has also considered the ideological implications – nay, temptations –
Gail Collins, short of an idea for a column this week, clutters-up the NYT op-ed page with the fanciful suggestion that George W Bush stand down now and let the cool new guy takeover. Well, fine. Whatever dreams tickle your fancy. Collins also drops this in, however: “Doing nothing is almost the worst thing a
I’ve had occasion to salute the glories of the Scottish fish and chip shop before – where else can you obtain a deep-fried kebab pizza? – but when it comes to naming chippies, I’m not sure there’s many that can beat this Belfast emporium: That’s right folks: For Cod and Ulster, where the King Billy’s
Christ, I’m glad I* don’t eat at the restaurants Thomas Friedman frequents: So, I have a confession and a suggestion. The confession: I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: “You don’t know
Sure, last month Barack Obama was an un-American, terrorist-coddling, muslim threat to every American Ideal every true-blooded, stout-hearted, tub-thumping patriot held dear. Now, however, things are a little different. We can seem more clearly these days, now the nonsense has receded. Ross Douthat offers a prediction: Among right-wing hawks, there will be strange-new-respectful talk about