Samizdata quote of the day
“Look around any developed country and it is obvious that there are a lot of people who eat too much. But there is another affliction of modern societies that too often gets overlooked: the greed for...
View ArticleThe suffering of being voluntary
“National service should be compulsory for the young, says Chuka Umunna” Coming out can be a stressful process. All should have sympathy with Mr Umunna’s personal struggle to accept his inner Tory....
View Article“Lock ’em up.” “Can’t. We need one of them to be Prime Minister.”
“Michael Gove is a man who invites a number of opinions, a great deal of them unflattering, even within the Conservative party, but I am yet to meet a Tory MP who sincerely believes that it would have...
View Article“It’s about all of us”
There’s an interesting video story on the BBC website today: Spearmint Rhino strippers fighting for the right to strip Feminist[s] campaigners have secretly filmed at the Spearmint Rhino strip club in...
View ArticleThere is nothing new under the sun
“What has been will be again,” as it says in Ecclesiastes, “what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Yesterday – to my shame I did not spot it until today – the Times...
View ArticleIt is wrong to force a person into sexual activity
I had thought that all decent people, whatever their politics or religion, accepted that each human being has the inalienable right to refuse to engage in sexual activity, and that for each person the...
View ArticleYou’ve heard of precrime. Meet preantipathy.
The concept of “Precrime” was introduced to the world by the science fiction author Philip K Dick, whose dystopian 1956 short story Minority Report became a film in 2002 and reality in 2020 according...
View ArticleDiscussion point: compulsory vaccination
Stop return of measles by making MMR jab compulsory, say GPs. The Guardian headline makes it sound as if all GPs (General Practitioners) have said this. In fact only four named doctors are quoted, and...
View ArticleKeeping the poor from wealth and the sick from health
“Bulgarian authorities bust gang suspected of illegal organ trading”, reports the Chinese state news agency Xinhua. Bulgarian law enforcement authorities have dismantled a four-member organized...
View ArticleWe have always been at war with Vapasia
India bans e-cigarettes as global vaping backlash grows India has announced a ban on electronic cigarettes, as a backlash gathers pace worldwide about a technology promoted as less harmful than smoking...
View ArticleThat Which Shall Not Be Named
It waits. It hungers. In its tenebrous embrace all memories, all identities, all names are lost. What was once known becomes unknown. And a jolly good thing too, that’s what I say. The Scottish...
View ArticleAnother unfortunate speaks
A few months back I posted about the conflict between feminists and strippers at the Spearmint Rhino strip club in Sheffield. Writing in the Guardian, Kate Lister both provides an update on that...
View ArticleThe Anti-Saloon League is back
“Prohibition showed bans can be good for us”, writes David Aaronovitch in the Times. Unironically. He means it. He thinks Prohibition was good and wants it back. I suppose it was ever thus; it is like...
View ArticleUniversal healthcare vs the rights of doctors and nurses
So it wasn’t George Bernard Shaw after all. It wasn’t him in the funny story about the dinner party, I mean, the one where a man teasingly asks the woman seated next to him, “Would you sleep with me...
View ArticleOur ‘Stasi’ face a legal challenge –‘The right to be offended does not exist’...
A Lincolnshire businessman (and former police officer), Mr Harry Miller, has sought a judicial review of one of the more sinister aspects of current policing, the recording of ‘hate incidents’ by the...
View ArticleIf you want to be welcome, do not demand entry
The ceremonial of the State Opening of Parliament includes a moment when Black Rod, the Queen’s representative, approaches the door of the Commons to summon MPs for the Queen’s Speech. Tradition...
View ArticleIf women own their bodies they can choose to modify them
The BBC reports, Calls for ‘virginity repair’ surgery to be banned Campaigners are urging the government to outlaw “virginity repair” surgery. Many Muslim women risk being outcast, or in extreme cases...
View ArticleBringing a criminal to justice at the cost of telling their victims what they...
A horrible thought occurred to me while reading press accounts of the recent trial and conviction of Reynhard Sinaga, who may have been Britain’s most prolific rapist. Sinaga’s modus operandi was as...
View ArticleLet us follow the righteous policy of Iran
Postrel’s kidney lasted Satel 10 years. By the time her immune system rejected it, aged 60, she had found another donor. Satel is now on her third right kidney and is feeling fine. She was fortunate –...
View ArticleWe are all Uighurs now.
The ramblings of our Prime Minister this evening, no data, no projections, no reasoning other than the projected incompetence of our nationalised health care system, no laws cited (but they are there),...
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