You'll be delighted to hear that The Sharpener is back online and that I have a new post there on why it's right to treat politics as a trivial and irrelevant sideshow. Also, now that the Sharpener is back up, I'm going to try and get back into the habit of putting my political stuff … Continue reading Good news, everybody
Category: Bit of politics
Two possibilities: 1) you believe that people should go to jail and be registered as sex offenders for owning pictures of consensual bondage; or: 2) you should sign this petition.
It ought to be pretty obvious that banning drinking in a place is completely different from banning drunken louts from a place. If you ban drinking in a place, it prevents people who aren’t louts but fancy a beer from having one, while doing absolutely nothing to prevent louts who are drunk from causing a … Continue reading If we ban harmless things, then harmful things will magically disappear
A non-Londoner asked me on Saturday what I thought Boris Johnson would be like as London mayor. I said that I really didn't know, which was the main reason I hadn't voted for him (I also can't stand his Wooster-ish public persona, but I'm quite happy to vote for someone I don't personally like if … Continue reading How big is Boris’s tent?
Justin is looking for constructive suggestions on what Labour could possibly do to get over their steamrollering. Mine include: 1) keep the 21% basic tax rate; abolish tax credits; and use the money saved by abolishing the 10p band to raise the personal allowance; 2) abolish NI and raise the basic and higher tax rates … Continue reading 100% hindsight, 100% of the time
Simon Jenkins: No good is served by incarcerating an illiterate drugs "mule" in Holloway for 14 years for a first offence when she had no clue what she was doing and has left four children on the streets of Jamaica. She will be sent back in seven years, after Britain has spent £250,000 turning her … Continue reading If you disagree with this, you have no soul and no brain
Diamond Geezer's coverage of the mayoral race has been entirely on fire. The latest, possibly last, and definitely funniest summary of the campaign I've so far seen, is the London Mayoral Hustings 2012: Paxman: Ahhhhh yes, transport. What are your priorities for the next four years? Boris: Crossrail, yes, er, that's something I'd really like … Continue reading Final mayoralty
David Aaronovitch is one of the few Decent-ists that I like and respect. So it's good to see him stating the obvious truths that more or less everyone (whether left or right) has forgotten as we descend in to a Cassandrine orgy of unwarranted gloom: Taking modern Britain, for all that any country is beset … Continue reading Reality check
Diamond Geezer has an excellent piece on the sterling work that Boris Johnson has done in eradicating crime, misery, poverty, racial disharmony, etc from the town of Henley, and how useful this experience will be if he's elected Mayor of London... Would throbbing multicultural London (population seven and a half million) be a better place … Continue reading Ready to face any challenge
Whatever else it may be, a walk-out among well-educated civil servants over not getting the same large pay rises they've received for most of the last 10 years is not The Workers Sticking It To The Man.