A chap called John Russo, whose comments I follow on LinkedIn, takes aim at the recent pattern of well-off people joining “Patriotic Millionaire” calls for folk like them to be taxed a lot more. An obvious retort is that all they need to do is set up a direct debit with the relev … | Continue reading
So let us name the principle actually in operation, because it is not sub judice. Sub judice is a rule, and rules apply evenly or they are not rules. The principle in operation is that speculation is dangerous when it is inconvenient and wholesome when it is useful. Ann’s case, w … | Continue reading
These cases might initially read as isolated absurdities: a pensioner’s raided home, a fine for a nickname, a meme investigated as though it were genuine Nazi propaganda. Taken together, they describe a pattern in which laws designed to protect democracy from its enemies are bein … | Continue reading
Clive Crook, a columnist in Bloomberg, does not mince his words about the new UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, who appears to be of the view that the pro-market reforms of Mrs Thatcher and some of her successors (not nearly pro-market enough, in my view), were all a terrible mist … | Continue reading
All things grow, bacteria, blue whales, businesses and bureaucracies. The difference for the latter is, that the first three must wrench a living from a cold, uncaring world, whereas the latter merely needs to increase taxes. The bureaucracy grows like a cancer, stealing resource … | Continue reading
Christopher Nolan’s flick The Odyssey is probably a work of marketing genius, or maybe not, we will see. Many are now saying ‘based’ culture warriors and those repelled by certain very outré casting choices have got it wrong and it is actually good. However, you will never convi … | Continue reading
There is a Crowdfunder live at the moment which tells you everything you need to know about the government of this country. The Centre for Migration Control asked the Ministry of Justice a simple question. How many migrants have been convicted of murder, rape and the supply of we … | Continue reading
“Burnham to scrap Starmer’s digital ID scheme in ‘reset of priorities’”, the Guardian reports. Andy Burnham is expected to scrap Keir Starmer’s plans for digital ID cards in a “reset of priorities” when he enters Downing Street on Monday. The new Labour leader plans to redirect t … | Continue reading
“Andy Burnham’s line about reversing ‘40 years of neo-liberalism’ – i.e. since the Thatcher government’s reforms – is beginning to grate somewhat. ‘Britain took a series of wrong turns in the 1980s,’ he told us, while accepting the Labour leadership. We ‘surrendered control’ of w … | Continue reading
Speaking ill of the dead is not an offence, however offensive. If Heather Herbert joins the @SpeechUnion, we will do our best to help. https://t.co/5WAT2JdeZS — The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) July 16, 2026 “Speaking ill of the dead is not an offence, however offensive. If … | Continue reading
“The year 2026 brings four semiquincentennials that matter greatly to me, that I think are related to each other: the American Declaration of Independence; the publication of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; the publication of Edward Gi … | Continue reading
The inimitable Preston Byrne has compared two think tank proposals for restoring free speech within the United Kingdom in A Tale of Two Bills: Comparing the Adam Smith Institute’s and the Prosperity Institute’s Free Speech Proposals. This kind of thing is an essential part of set … | Continue reading
Combined with the already-passed Online Safety Act and the previously announced intention to ban under-16s entirely from social media — a ban that Prime Minister-in-waiting Burnham intends to support — these laws, enacted or proposed, look to anyone except a Labour lickspittle to … | Continue reading
I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence that the families of the victims of horrific crime always express the same concern, word for word, every time. I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with the “specially-trained” officers who support them. – Konstantin Kisin | Continue reading
She was funny in a register entirely her own. On day one in the Strasbourg parliament I stepped out of an office into one of those interminable corridors to see her at a distance, walking in lockstep with Claire Fox, the two of them deep in conversation. Two women of ferocious co … | Continue reading
This is a fine article by Nina Roberts, but it might have been nice if Guardian readers and their US equivalents had thought about the disproportionate burden of “equality” laws on small businesses (as opposed to large businesses who have whole floors full of hotshot lawyers) for … | Continue reading
When you’ve lost the Guardian… How to Get Filthy Rich With Gary Stevenson review – how did this end up such an embarrassment? This evangelising of a wealth tax should have made for a truly amazing documentary. But it allows its host to be totally out-argued by all his interviewee … | Continue reading
I was saddened but not particularly surprised to hear that Ann Widdecombe had died yesterday at the age of 78. There seemed to be somewhat less than the usual amount of vile gloating on Twitter*, and many comments like this one from Colin Freeman: Doorstepped Anne Widdecombe late … | Continue reading
Markets are discovery mechanisms. In war adaptation and discovery are a matter of survival. Ukraine began the war with a traditional military procurement system. Large, standardised orders from suppliers chosen by the defence ministry with no room for adjustment to individual cir … | Continue reading
“Invest in Britain or I’ll force you to, minister tells pension funds”, the Guardian reports: The business secretary, Peter Kyle, has told UK pension funds to “get off their high horses” and invest in Britain or be forced to do so by law. Expressing frustration at the level of in … | Continue reading
The mountain… According to the polling company Ipsos, 2 in 3 British adults (69%) would support a law that requires social media companies to use age-verification tools to ban children under the age of 16 from accessing their platforms in the UK, and 3 in 5 (61%) support social … | Continue reading
Every party in trouble prays for the same miracle, which is amnesia. The Conservative Party’s entire strategy for the next four years rests on the hope that the British people will misremember the last fourteen. Kemi Badenoch has said as much, remarking that it is unhelpful to ch … | Continue reading
Lots of news today. Nigel Farage has stood down as MP for Clacton, stating he will seek to be re-elected in the resulting by-election. The Daily Mail has defeated Prince Harry and several other claimants in the High Court, a result that Lord Dacre, the Mail’s publisher, has haile … | Continue reading
Gawain Towler explains the ongoing campaign by the British establishment to destroy the existential threat The Reform Party poses to them. The first aim, the one they would toast if they achieved it, is to take Farage down altogether, to force a resignation. They will not be so … | Continue reading
“Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad o … | Continue reading
Establishment clearly running an operation to get Farage. If they do force him out – clearly the game plan- over technicalities about what he did / didn’t declare, I think they’ll start a firestorm. The public will see this as the attempted stitch up that it is. Clacton folk (I k … | Continue reading
The government consultation document “Making public services work for you with your digital identity” gives its chapters aspirational names like “Useful”, “Inclusive”, and “Trusted”. Here’s the description for “Trusted”: Part 5: Trusted includes information on how we will design … | Continue reading
Despite all our present problems and challenges, aggravated by so many daunting divisions, how awed, thrilled, and grateful our Founding Fathers would be to see just how extraordinarily well our republic has done over the last quarter-millennium. They were not sure if we could ev … | Continue reading
The history of post-war Britain is essentially the educated middle class giddily, gleefully taking a sledgehammer to every single load-bearing pillar in society in the belief that the roof will somehow stay up through the sheer force of our own cleverness. We’re now finding out. … | Continue reading
“The richest persons in Africa are heads of state, governors and ministers. So every ‘educated’ African who wants to be rich – and there is nothing wrong with wanting to be rich – heads straight into government or politics.” – Ghanaian economist George Ayitteh Found via this twee … | Continue reading
https://x.com/tomhfh/status/2066778048460898535 It's a jarringly disorienting feeling, being told by a set of politicians who did not grow up with youtube, that those of us who did were somehow victims. That my childhood was so horrific it must now be made illegal. https://t.co/l … | Continue reading
The Americans are gaining healthy life years while we are losing them. Hmm, that is interesting, no? Thus the UK requires more red in tooth and claw capitalism, more neoliberalism, obviously. Sell the NHS for scrap and go private! And, well, but that’s not quite how American heal … | Continue reading
“We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country, including in our healthcare system and hospitality sector and we depend on them to make our country work. We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility.” If a membe … | Continue reading
The Guardian phrases its description of what the EU is doing more sympathetically – “EU introduces €3 customs charge on small parcels to curb cheap Chinese imports” – but the end result is the same. | Continue reading
Lauren Southern has an interesting perspective on why the ‘dissident’ social media did not go the way we expected. Yet again, I am very happy I never made Samizdata anyone’s “day job”. | Continue reading
And, btw, when it comes to words, Trump made one of his most astonishing public lies recently about how Putin did not help Iran in the recent war. Speaking at the G7, Trump went out of his way to praise Putin for being “neutral” in the Iran War. Here is what he said. “And I want … | Continue reading
Claire Fox lays out the folly of trusting the state and state-adjacent institutions to decides what constitutes disinformation. | Continue reading
Yes, yes, we know, paying tax is the price of partaking in civilisation. But that’s still a price, a cost. We think that people should see, up close and personal, the cost of that civilisation being built on their money. We are therefore against this: Income tax will be automatic … | Continue reading
Michael Mosbacher, the Telegraph‘s Deputy Comment Editor, is going for the rage-clicks, but he has a point: There are under 1,000 ponies left on Dartmoor and over 145,000 sheep. Since the 1950s, the moor’s pony population has fallen by close to 90 per cent, whilst ovine numbers h … | Continue reading
Can a man whose legacy will be full-term abortion, censorship, digital surveillance, and the abolition of trial by jury really claim to have rescued Britain from the moral abyss? Can a man who gave us soaring youth unemployment, who shrugged at farm suicides, who thinks nothing o … | Continue reading
“The more big and active the state is, the more it is worth purchasing.” The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State, by Deidre N McCloskey and Alberto Mingardi. (page 97). | Continue reading
If you want to understand Andy Burnham, the only thing you’ll ever have to read is… this. I was going to tag this as “humour”, but it’s too true to be haha funny. | Continue reading
Hard to disagree with this… | Continue reading
“Change”, currently on sale at the Labour Party online shop for a mere £12.50. One has to admire the way that Sir Keir Starmer allowed himself to be photographed with his sleeves rolled up, but loosening his tie was a step too far. The ungovernable country? Why Britain keeps losi … | Continue reading
Well, in the nine years since the slaughter at Manchester Arena, our elites have continued to “choose love” by leaving our borders wide open, which has continued to allow some people who prefer to ‘choose hate’ to come here and attack us. The Belfast-based writer and podcaster Je … | Continue reading
Here is a story about a place I once knew which I found via this post by “TantumErgo” in the UK Politics subreddit. “Owners of former Walthamstow pub ordered to stop using it as Buddhist temple”, the Waltham Forest Echo reports: An unlicensed Buddhist temple operating out of a fo … | Continue reading
Europe has spent decades believing that you can regulate prosperity, tax innovation, and distrust entrepreneurship, while Silicon Valley and Shenzhen built the future. Now, European Commissioner Virkkunen “Spuit11” warns that Europe is dependent on American and Chinese AI for dig … | Continue reading
No end to the Islamic Republic of Iran government, no end to Iran’s missile programme, no handover of enriched uranium, yes to ending US sanctions and thus forgoing any political leverage, yes to accepting Iranian (and Omani, for what it’s worth) control over Hormuz, no end to th … | Continue reading