We are so far down the slippery slope of “having not been allowed to speak the truth about science because it must be subsumed to ideology” that re-entry into any sort of objective assessment is going to be incredibly jarring. The foundations of modern technocracy are invalid and … | Continue reading

The COVID enquiry has been policy based evidence making – Gawain Towler | Continue reading

The Guardian‘s “social affairs correspondent”, Richard Booth, has written an article with the title “Five things that could help fix Britain’s private rented sector”. By “fix” he must mean “fix its current problems in stone”, because, with the possible exception of the first, eve … | Continue reading

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is a bit like having a department tasked with increasing alcohol consumption and sobriety. – Commenter Bell Curve, over a beer or three. | Continue reading

Tony Blair is a political virtuoso, whatever one thinks of his policies or ideas, and he stated the position very clearly. The 21st century is not a battle between capitalism and socialism. It is one between progress – that is, liberal progress – and conservatism. It follows that … | Continue reading

Ten years and ten days ago, the sadly missed Brian Micklethwait wrote this: “What if there is a real collective disaster?” Brian quoted this article by Paul Murphy which said that the response of governments and the scientific establishment to what they saw as the global warming … | Continue reading

By some miraculous and tortuous process you have become your country’s head of government and been endowed with dictatorial powers. What is the first thing you do? | Continue reading

Soon after Hamas attacked Israel, Jeremy Corbyn made a speech. Kyle Orton noticed something odd about it: “young people who died in the Negev desert” “young people who’ve been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza” Telling how he thinks. So sad about those young people who “died in th … | Continue reading

What happened over the weekend is that every single media outlet in the country went into overdrive to say that Braverman’s comments are fuelling the “far right”. If you’re not entirely clued up on British political designations, in this country the far right generally refers to … | Continue reading

The state does not provide stability in such a case but rather the sort of mono-culture that makes systems unstable and takes them all down at once in a paroxysm of fiscal failure. As ever, the mantra of “too important to be left to free markets/the people” is the most towering o … | Continue reading

This article about “climate fatigue” by Francesco Grillo is one of the better arguments I have seen in the Guardian on the topic: “Climate fatigue isn’t a sign that Europeans are in denial – it’s a sign of their fear”. It starts in the usual fashion: The first step is to recognis … | Continue reading

At the time, there were many eminent leaders in the West — politicians, scholars, journalists, and other experts — who insisted that the terrorists were motivated by reasons other than the ones they and their leader Osama Bin Laden had articulated so clearly. So Islam had an alib … | Continue reading

I like Vivek Ramaswamy. He says a lot of things that need to be said. But on Ukraine he is absolutely clueless. Actually, it’s a bit worse than that; he has negative knowledge. Denys Davydov explains: Update Well, I did try to get it to start at the good bit but without success. … | Continue reading

Hamas likes nothing better than an Israeli strike that kills civilians. That is why it has reportedly been preventing its people from fleeing the war zone, sometimes by force. They seemingly want Palestinian casualties to pile high, in full view of the world’s media. The BBC and … | Continue reading

This is pretty grim stuff by the splendid Nancy Rommelmann. Read it anyway. | Continue reading

“There is an ironically neocolonial feel to the cultural elites’ absolution of Hamas. It is their indoctrination into the politics of identity that leads them to view Israel as the culpable adult in this relationship and the Palestinians as blameless children. Critical-race-theor … | Continue reading

I wanted to post something that wasn’t about the Israel-Hamas war. This is as close as I got. Pakistan starts mass deportation of undocumented Afghans – Shah Meer Baloch in the Guardian Why is Pakistan deporting over a million undocumented Afghan immigrants? – Reuters Pak Deports … | Continue reading

“Netanyahu quits over withdrawal from Gaza”. Having got your attention, I will now admit that the Guardian story by Conal Urquhart to which I just linked dates from 8 August 2005. Despite the news of Netanyahu having quit being eighteen years out of date, it is worth your time to … | Continue reading

Its in many ways the crucial question that needs to be answered honestly now. Do we want Ukraine to win the war and liberate all its territory? or Do we want Ukraine to be forced to accept a deal which hands over parts of the country to Putin? The rhetoric of western leaders is t … | Continue reading

“But I must say the general mood of many people my age is an astounded sense that we began in our youth, in the 1960s and ’70s, saying `Don’t trust anyone over 30.’ And now, as we survey the wreckage the woke regime has done to the academy, the arts, the corporate office, we are … | Continue reading

It is unlikely to be one of those subjects that ought to grab more than fleeting attention, but being a man of the media and with a liking for satire, wit and a good investigative story, like many of my fellow Gen-Xers, I used to read Private Eye. The magazine, founded in the “Sa … | Continue reading

Hamas Official Ghazi Hamad: We Will Repeat the October 7 Attack Time and Again Until Israel Is Annihilated; We Are Victims – Everything We Do Is Justified #Hamas #Gaza #Palestinians pic.twitter.com/kXu3U0BtAP — MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) November 1, 2023 The video embedded in this twe … | Continue reading

“Comic book fans will be familiar with the term ‘retcon’, which in layman’s terms means that the writer waves his hand and tells you ‘Remember when we said this? We screwed up, forget about that.'” – ‘Spoony’ quoted on the TV Tropes website. The paths of Black History and Welsh h … | Continue reading

“The kinds of people who are willing to justify, minimize, or deny the slaughter of millions by the likes of Stalin and Mao are unlikely to blanch at Hamas’ much smaller-scale atrocities. If you are willing to embrace the Great Leap Forward, Stalin’s purges, or Lenin’s Red Terror … | Continue reading

“The sudden switch from play-based childhood to phone-based childhood is—we believe—the leading candidate for being the major cause of the international collapse of adolescent mental health.” Zach Rausch, Jon Haidt. | Continue reading

Dr Wahid Asif Shaida has worked as an NHS doctor for a practice in Harrow for more than twenty years. He is described as having a senior role at the surgery as a mentor and trainer for recently-qualified doctors. Remember the Hizb ut-Tahrir member who led the chant for jihad the … | Continue reading

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world”, the great mathematician Archimedes is supposed to have said. Maybe it was their company name that led Anglo-Dutch consumer packaged goods company Unilever to briefly decide that their re … | Continue reading

But we cannot allow freedom of speech to become a casualty in the fight against anti-Semitism. We already have a plethora of restrictions on speech and protest, on everything from ‘hate speech’ to disruptive demonstrations to ‘grossly offensive’ messages. Misgendering someone on … | Continue reading

Ten months ago, a woman called Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested for silently praying outside an abortion clinic. For days ago, a man whose name the police know but have not made public was not arrested for asking a “What is the solution to liberate people from the concentration … | Continue reading

In one of the most jaw-dropping interjections of the inquiry to date, Baroness Hallett revealed a prejudgement that if masking people could have had even the slightest of benefits, and seemingly without even contemplating that risks and known harms might need to be weighed too, s … | Continue reading

As relations with the US deteriorate, China probably has little choice but to continue to strengthen its armed forces. But it should remember that its military advances to date have been underwritten by the wealth and technological capabilities created during the last four decade … | Continue reading

IDF spokesman Daniel Agari steps up to deliver some preliminary remarks. “We want people to understand what we are fighting for,” he says. “This is something else. Something has happened to Israel. This is not about rage or righteousness but the sense that this is a crime vs huma … | Continue reading

“Since apologies are now required. Challenging any consensus is fundamentally important to good science – especially that of an unproven intervention such as lockdown. The onus should have been on those proposing such a radical new policy to justify it, not the reverse. Sweden is … | Continue reading

I am not against a rule-based system and I am not against human rights. I simply think that we need to decide what human rights we want and to what degree we want them. At the moment, the problem is not the Convention itself, which is a collection of principles, not a single one … | Continue reading

“The #DSA (Digital Services Act) is here to protect free speech against arbitrary decisions.” So said Thierry Breton, EU’s Internal Market Commissioner, in a recent tweet. Given the extraordinary level of discretion this Act gives the European Commission to pressure online platfo … | Continue reading

We are most of us familiar enough with how the cycle of violence works in the Middle East but for those who aren’t here is a quick summary: 1. Palestinian terrorists commit outrage. 2. Israel resolves to do “something”. 3. “Something” turns out to be against international law and … | Continue reading

“Liberals and centrists seem to have paid attention to conservative boycotts of Bud Light and Target. Then came the scandal surrounding Ibram Kendi’s antiracism center at Boston University. Having burned through over $20 million, he now faces an inquiry from the university. Kendi … | Continue reading

“Hamas is the enemy not only of Jews, but of the Palestinians themselves. Israel hoped that when Gaza was evacuated it would become an economic powerhouse. Had that happened, many Israelis would have been prepared to withdraw from most of the West Bank. The purpose of Zionism, af … | Continue reading

Four days ago John Simpson of the BBC wrote this article, “Why BBC doesn’t call Hamas militants ‘terrorists’ – John Simpson”, in which he said, “It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn – who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.” It ma … | Continue reading

“If nothing else, we have learnt how poisonous the decolonisation agenda is.” Daniel Hannan, Sunday Telegraph (£), 15 October. | Continue reading

Writing in the Australian edition of the Guardian, Lorena Allam says, “Rejecting the voice shows Australia is still in denial, its history of forgetting a festering wrong” The “Voice” refers to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which is, or was, “a proposed federal advisory bod … | Continue reading

My stance on this is Bill Burr’s. I’ll take it seriously when women fans show up. The men’s game is subsiding the sport with my money. Not that anyone asked my permission. I’ve done more than enough and it’s just “not my job” to watch it for them too. – ‘Tom Payne‘ | Continue reading

I suspect this observation from writer Katya Sedgwick that Mr Obama and his circle are increasingly driving the US administration, is going to gain ground and become noisier in the months leading to November 2024: It’s clear that Joe Biden doesn’t have the mental agility to lead … | Continue reading

When people call for negotiations with Russia… Even before #Russia launched its attack on #Ukraine, Estonian Prime Minister @kajakallas warned Western leaders not to make any concessions to the Kremlin, calling to mind a 3-point negotiation tactic the Soviet Union used to apply. … | Continue reading