Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
Britain had a very funny show that ran from 1980 to 1988 called Yes, Minister. It was being made as a lot of the current crises in Europe and Britain — mostly EU hegemony and Islamic immigration/militancy — were beginning to become part of the political scene. The show was
Continue readingI have to admit that I never potty trained my children. Instead, I sent them to a Montessori preschool. By the time each was about 25 months old, he or she was completely potty trained. The Montessori approach simply integrates visits to the potty into the toddler curriculum. Since the
Continue readingBritain’s Telegraph has three interesting articles, and the London Times one: Read about the vast difference between Britain’s and France’s socialized medicine. I’d certainly like to know what accounts for the difference before I start making changes to the American system. Color me skeptical, but I bet Obama, who shows
Continue readingI can’t add anything to this that you haven’t already thought of yourselves: A solicitor who specialises in representing terror suspects and tells them not to cooperate with police was paid almost £1 million in legal aid last year. Muddassar Arani’s firm represented Abu Hamza, dirty bomb plotter Dhirin Barot
Continue reading(This is the first in what I hope will be a series of very civil essays examining marriage. Suek got me started with this idea based on a comment she wrote saying that, well, we need to figure out what marriage is all about. Planned future essays will involve separating
Continue readingThere’s talk of Obama giving Hillary the green light to socialize American medicine if she’ll walk away from the primaries. Melanie Phillips gives us a good example of why the renewed specter of socialized medicine should worry us: To the Labour Party, the National Health Service is the talismanic proof
Continue readingGay marriage has a warm, fuzzy feeling. Those who support it ask, who can be hurt by granting to gay couples the same rights we give to straight couples? As you know, while I have no trouble with same sex relationships between consenting adults, and favor granting civil benefits to
Continue readingIt’s been a long time since I’ve read anything this sad. It comes from the Church of England’s own newspaper: If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is
Continue readingAmericans do not have any idea how lucky they are to live in a land where freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution. More than that, they should resist every “soft” effort to make speech out of bounds on the grounds that it can hurt someone’s feelings. Absent this
Continue readingIt’s a tragedy, but it’s also an interesting look at England today, since this is a story that could not possibly have happened at any time other than the first decade of the 21st Century: Britain’s first Muslim peer, Lord Ahmed [a Muslim peer is an entirely new thing in
Continue readingTwo stories from today’s British news: I Two young men pounced on a stranger on a London street, stabbed him, slit his throat, and ran off, leaving him to bleed to death on the street. That’s sad, but that’s not the news. This is the news: Britain’s most senior judge,
Continue readingWhen I lived in England, the mail arrived twice a day, six days a week. (Maybe only once on Saturdays; I can’t remember.) Within town, you could mail something in the morning, and know that it would arrive at its destination in the evening. It put the American postal service
Continue readingWhile the ordinary English resident freely ignores the fact that his every move is being monitored by CCTV, so that crime remains unaffected by the government’s watchful eye, police are hard at work treating as hardcore criminals people who drop apple cores — an unsavory, untidy act, perhaps, but not
Continue readingI am a huge Georgette Heyer fan. I consider her one of the most amusing, sophisticated novel writers ever, and think it’s a shame that she got labeled as a pure romance writer, a genre that puts her in the “I browse that section wearing sunglasses and a scarf” category
Continue readingIn Britain, it’s impossible to go anywhere without being spied upon. England has spend billions of pounds setting up the densest CCTV (close circuit TV) network in the world. Or perhaps I should say in the semi-free world, because I’d go odds that North Korea has a pretty good CCTV
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