2) if you are harmed by something that wasn’t malicious, you have an absolute moral duty to forgive whoever did it.

3) people who fail to forgive people who’ve non-maliciously harmed them are the worst of all people, and the only people I truly loathe and despise.

For example: anyone who thinks that Paul Foot is a bad man because James Hanratty turned out guilty is a worthless idiot – because although JH was guilty, he shouldn’t have been hanged on the falisfied evidence that was presented in his case. See also: OJ. I’m not mournful for the rapist and murderer Hanratty, but Paul Foot is absolutely right that he shouldn’t have been convicted.

On the other hand, people sometimes judge on excellence:

When a knight won his spurs, in the stories of old,
He was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold;
With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand
For God and for valour he rode through the land.

No charger have I, and no sword by my side,
Yet still to adventure and battle I ride,
Though back into storyland giants have fled,
And the knights are no more and the dragons are dead.

Let faith be my shield and let joy be my steed
‘Gainst the dragons of anger, the ogres of greed;
And let me set free, with the sword of my youth,
From the castle of darkness the power of the truth.

Update: this post makes no sense. For those struggling to connect it with reality, When A Knight Won His Spurs was written by Joyce Maxtone-Graham, whose nephew wrote many of the best Simpsons episodes.

2) which famous 20th Century American science fiction writer wrote Blade Runner: a movie?

In most countries that have real languages and joke languages that are indulged, the joke language that’s indulged is the language of the people the land was stolen from, and it’s a pathetic token attempt to make amends. Which is fair play.

And even in those places, the joke language isn’t actually required to be taught as a second national language outside those communities. All signs, ad campaigns and media don’t need to be shown in the real language and the joke language nationwide.

But the white people who stole Quebec couldn’t even be arsed to learn English – and Britain in the 1770s was so lame (and, in fairness, distracted) that we didn’t compel our inherited Frog-speaking subjects to learn our language, give up their disgraceful religion, and generally follow the wise example of our settlers elsewhere in Canada. Together, these poor decisions have created one of the worst pathetic cultures of fake victimhood ever to have existed.

So in the rest of Canada, French is an official second language that must be indulged and written in for product labelling and all official purposes. But in Quebec, English isn’t a second language for signing and official purposes; it’s forbidden for any of that kind of thing. This fact highlights the fact that Quebecers aren’t just stroppy, they’re total bastards.

The only reason the rest of Canada puts up with Quebec is to annoy the USA. Actually, that’s an excellent evolutionary example of ‘high cost signals’: “yes, we’re willing to put up with a province full of the most dislikeable Frenchmen ever, on the grounds that you’re even worse than them”.

Oh, and Leonard Cohen’s a Jew who sings in English, so totally doesn’t count.

Semi-relatedly, I hadn’t realised that Tony Hayward was a drilling engineer by background, rather than a generalist suit. That’ll be why BP has been focusing on containing the spill, rather than running a super-slick PR campaign, then.

Partly that’s because I think it’d make an excellent decoration for my house.

But it’s also partly because I could lift it high in the air and sing at the top of my voice, “HEAD OF BEVAN, HEAD OF BEVAN…”

What links Bobby Brown, a girl who thinks of ghosts, and Justine Frischmann?

Hence, it couldn’t have passed any domestic English legislation without Tory support. Hence, it would immediately have collapsed, and hence, it could never have happened in the first place.

Take-out: the West Lothian question is self-resolving, and a de facto English parliament already exists: there is no conceivable scenario under which a party or alliance without a majority of English seats could govern the UK.

Sure, formally (or, more plausibly given the UK constitution, ‘creating a tradition of’) taking away Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs’ right to vote on laws that are solely domestic English in nature wouldn’t be a terrible thing to do. But it wouldn’t actually have any benefits for anybody, either…

Unrelatedly, which punk song contains the lyric “I’m looking for you, oh my sweetheart”?

Mr Brown is in the wrong job, and needs to resign tomorrow no mater what the final results, but the speech was heartfelt, interesting, passionate and genuinely moving.

Mr Cameron sounded like the kind of personality-free senior manager who gives corporate Powerpoint presentations that mean nothing, are full of waffly buzzwords, are delivered with intensely loatheable smugness, and generally make you want to die.

I don’t think I could stand living in a country where someone that personally dislikeable (which Gordon Brown, for all his faults, isn’t – you might hate his politics and/or his competence, but I genuinely can’t imagine anyone disliking the man, personally, on meeting him) was main national figurehead and spokesman. So I suspect I’ll be out here for a fair while then…

(FX: checks “permanent residency” requirements again…)