Since I've already tweeted that it annoys me, as a left-wing kind of person, that some people in the 1980s hated Mrs Thatcher so much that they opposed the most reasonable and fair war that the UK has ever fought, I thought I'd make clear on my blog that anyone who opposes it is pretty … Continue reading Just, worth putting out here
Banditry
I've always found halal slaughter less unpleasant than regular industrial animal slaughter. As anyone who's ever cut themselves with a properly sharp blade knows, cutting yourself with a sharp blade doesn't hurt at all until about a minute after the event, by which point the animal is already distinctly dead. You might prefer your animals … Continue reading Secularists Go Silly On Halal
Y'know, this #ebz stuff is fun, but it does steal (small portions of) your life http://fallenlondon.com/c/298257 # Smearing Julian Assange: not just a sport for insane man-hating Swedish prosecutors any more: http://bit.ly/96uqCR # Fairly sure you power down an EMU by switching off the motors and removing the key. @squeakez can confirm @kofeyh @joshsharp #trainjokes … Continue reading What I’ve been up to, week ending 2010-10-03
There are lots of countries in the world that are tax havens. They are short of skilled labour. Anyone earning enough to pay higher-rate tax in a Western country has a skillset that would easily land them a job doing something similar in a tax haven. Instead, they've chosen to live where they do. Definitionally, … Continue reading Taxes on the rich clearly aren’t too high
The suggestion that the NSW government had done nothing wrong would normally seem unlikely, irrespective of context. Even more so when the context is a $2.6bn capital investment project that’s at risk of collapsing, requiring a massive government bailout, or both. However, the funding shortfall threatening the public-private partnership (PPP) to build 78 new Waratah … Continue reading Waratah trains: why the NSW government isn’t at fault
Sorry #LibDems. Having been in another country w/coalition - and having looked at the numbers on #ukvotes - you did the best thing available # Directly related to last tweet - the only alliance in Aus with a mandate to govern was ALP/Green. Not Nationals/Liberals. #auspol # Powered by Twitter Tools.
Matt Yglesias, who used to be a liberal US commentator but seems to have turned into a neo-liberal US commentator, has a very odd piece on retailing, in which he argues that being awesome at retailing is the US's major skill, which will one day benefit poor benighted foreigners: We’re the world leaders in retail … Continue reading World leader? Not even close
From a post on the correlation between studying engineering and becoming a violent extremist, commenter Tom Bach: Hitler was notoriously lazy and profoundly ignorant; in large measure because he never studied anything and read less. He enjoyed rambling monologues filled with made up facts. Commenter Stuart: It sounds as if Hitler had been born a … Continue reading Crooked Timber comments deliver, again
Rupert Murdoch to the FTC: Technology makes it cheap and easy to distribute news for anyone with Internet access, but producing journalism is expensive. True. Phones don't just illegally tap themselves, and making police investigations magically disappear is also an expensive business... However, his implied public service argument falls down on an obvious point: none … Continue reading As if he’d know
RT @legaleagleMHM Just opened wheelie bin and a WASP flew out. Who on earth would have put a wasp in a wheelie bin; what's world coming to? # Thing which perplexes me about this TBL piece: how the hell did they find anywhere in Aus that even serves hot curry? http://bit.ly/aGAFvV # I mean, if … Continue reading What I’ve been up to, week ending 2010-09-05