Wednesday, 19 September 2012
Michael Blackburn: ‘Nothing cracks. No quivering lips. No emotion. He plays it like he’s ordering burgers and French fries in a suburban drive-through. This is everyday stuff to an important guy like himself. When he’s finished he folds up his papers and strides out all determined and statesman-like. Done. No questions for the Pres. No need. Too cool for that.’
Monday, 10 September 2012
I SEE THAT someone has handed Ed Miliband a wonk’s bauble in the form of an idea called “predistribution”, which he duly paraded in public as this week’s marvel. He’s a bit short on saying what predistribution is, except that it will offer workers a “top-up to their wages” and deliver them more skills. It […]
SINCE THE ROYAL Wedding in 2011, followed this year by the Jubilee and the Olympics, a wave of patriotism has washed through the UK, and the politicians have been desperate to turn it to their advantage. Keenest has been Ed Miliband and the Labour Party, a party not exactly known for its patriotic credentials. Thanks […]
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Michael Blackburn: ‘Now when sensitivity needs to be shown there has to be someone endued with such an excess of it they‘re deemed to require special treatment. In the gulag of post-Christian white liberal guilt you can guess through which minefields of sensitivity we are now tiptoeing.’
Michael Blackburn: ‘Walsingham is not stuck in a sentimental time-warp, but it does have an air of genteel untidiness and unkemptness: little lanes and passages lead to empty buildings, hollyhocks and various weeds grow in abundance, windows and doorframes could do with a good scrape and a bit of fresh paint.’
IT’S THAT TIME of year when the TV licence fee renewal pops up in my email inbox and reminds me of the two good reasons for putting the BBC in a home for retired Fabians. The first is that it’s too big. I no longer know how many TV and radio stations it has. Why […]
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Michael Blackburn: ‘So we’re the problem. Again. Not the culture that shaped the Ahmed parents, nor the religion that shaped that culture. No, in the deluded minds of the Roses and Ellens the blame lies with the very culture that gave them a home and the possibility of education and freedom for their children. I wonder if Jacqueline Rose considers herself to be implicated in this bizarre fabric of self-loathing, because it certainly doesn’t include me.
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At the heart of this minor clash between two opposing views on sexuality, religion and marriage lies a profoundly important idea about liberty. Progressives deliberately conflate disapproval with intolerance. In their world-view that which is disapproved of cannot be tolerated. The essence of liberty – of thought, speech and religion – is that one may tolerate something of which one disapproves. In the words of Milton, it’s that “many be tolerated rather than all compelled”.
Michael Blackburn: ‘In the collective mind of the mainstream media defending legal tax avoidance is like endorsing poverty and child abuse. Attacking tax evasion, however, is a safer bet, although the distraction offered by David Gauke is a petty affair and, as usual, targets the ordinary individual rather than the wealthiest.’
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If, when he told small business owners they had no role in the creation of their businesses, he was talking about state infrastructure he deliberately forgets the tax dollars those businesses contribute to its creation and maintenance. If he was talking about the general social and political context, that is, of a country built on the belief in individual endeavour and the willingness to take risks, then he’s just spat in the face of a whole nation. Neither of those is a good political move and both are dishonest.
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Michael Blackburn: Politicians are all happy to treat us as children or simpletons: “Ooh look, kiddies, here’s Dave riding to his very important job on a bike. He really cares about the environment.”; or “yes, he knows about ordinary grub, he had a pasty in Leeds railway station once. A large one. What a piggy.”
Hence my annoyance when some pontificating clown was talking on TV about “modernising” the House of Lords, smirking at his own zeitgeistiness that since this is now the twenty-first century we ought to have a democratic, ie elected, second chamber because that would be modern. And yes, it was a Liberal Democrat.
Michael Blackburn: Coming along and saying they need more “creativity” is a joke. Our young people are no more or less creative than they were three or four decades ago – but they are less well educated. Political visions come at a high cost but it’s not the visionaries who end up paying for them.
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Michael Blackburn: So who knows what reversal or radical change will take place in traffic planning over the next 30 years: the banning of all non-electric vehicles from town centres, perhaps, the introduction of the rickshaw? Or the return of the horse? Whatever it is, electric car, rickshaw or horse, you’ll still find yourself being bullied around a one-way system with most of your options for escape forbidden.
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Michael Blackburn: Whenever we get rich people in Britain saying they’ll leave the country if taxes go up or the wrong people get voted in, the general response is “close the door on your way out.” In France it appears to be the opposite. For M. Joffrin this is about patriotism. French money should stay in France. How dare the perfidious British “sabotage” the will of the French people by stealing its wealth-makers and slapping the greedy hand of the state away from their money?
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