It is come to this. Here is our Secretary of State for Culture: The culture secretary, Andy Burnham, says in an interview today that the government is considering the need for “child safe” websites – registered with cinema-style age warnings – to curb access to offensive or damaging online material. He plans to approach US…
Read More Burn, Hollywood, Burnham!No wonder the Indy‘s moving in with the Daily Mail; it’s taken to publishing leaders like this one, a crude bit of hard right culture war stuff which blames the Sharon Matthews case on “welfare”. Yes, really. They also rehearse the old Peter Lilley thing about “single mothers who get pregnant just to jump the…
Read More The Independent: Is OverIt seems that Andrew Gilligan has been stung by the phrase “Bendy Jihad”. So much so that he has devoted a whole column to moaning about it, or rather to moaning about anyone having the cheek to disagree with him. It’s a pity, then, that he couldn’t see his way to attributing his attack correctly,…
Read More Gilligan’s “Ibogaine Frenzy”; Assaults Wrong Man, Screaming NonsenseShorter Tim, Energy Edition: Commodity prices always come down in the end; except when I really want the price of steel to stay at 2007 levels because it harms the economics of wind power. Further, supply of manufactured goods always responds to price signals except when I have a bizarre ideological opposition to some particular…
Read More Bonus Tim Worstall Stupidity WatchWe’ve blogged before about the NHS’s computer project. So I’m not at all happy about this remarkably silly post at Timmeh’s. He takes issue with a post of Richard Murphy’s about bank nationalisation: Yup, the people who brought you the NHS Spine are to be put in charge of developing all banking software in Britain.…
Read More is there anything stupid going on at Tim Worstall’s?Oh bloody fuck. He’s at it again. George Osborne is in his white coat, on the stage, flogging his snake oil. All he needs now is a gospel choir. I think we’ve pointed this out before, but here goes. The Bank of England was nationalised in 1946. It’s part of the State. The money in…
Read More The Conservative Party: Can’t Be Trusted With GlueAt number 7 in Total Politics’ Top 100 Left-Wing Blogs: “Alternate Seat of YTR”. That’s apparently me. At number 100 in Total Politics’ Top 100 Left-Wing Blogs: “The Yorkshire Ranter”. That’s also me. I thought personality went a long way, but it looks like looks have quite an impact. Or maybe it’s Don Blaney who…
Read More Towards an Empirical Determination of Sampling Error in Iain Dale’s SurveyYou’d think someone who specialises in blogging about “public diplomacy” would notice when someone refloats a rah rah painted school success story from 2003. Iraqna didn’t “happen”; Orascom built it back then, and didn’t we all hear so much about how Iraqis had mobile phones? You didn’t hear so much, outside the trade, about how…
Read More Well, what about those Iraqi MOBILE PHONES? EH? EH?Tim Ireland’s new project is more necessary than ever. It’s not quite achieved the same degree of punch and professionalism that the daddy of tab-bashing blogs, BildBlog offers readers of Germany’s biggest newspaper, but give them time. (This also bothers me. When I started this blog there were one million blogs, of which 50,000 updated…
Read More Blinded By The SunOK, so I’ve been off line quite a bit due to a weird perversion called “moving house”. This means that my constituency MP is no longer Philip Hammond, which almost makes it all worthwhile by itself. Hammond was one of the most annoying features of living in wonderful Runnymede & Weybridge; an immensely self-satisfied and…
Read More I heard a rumour that someone got Philled in…