It used to be reasonably commonplace that bloggers, especially American ones, would say that at least in Britain there was enough diversity in the press that no equivalent to the classic US pundit wanker existed – no-one like David Brooks or David Broder, essentially content-free and heavily invested in the self-regard of the political class.…
Read More Martin Kettle Is a Worthless Old HackIt’s quite well-known that I don’t think very much of Niall Ferguson’s intellectual credibility. But this is special, in the sense of “I’m not different…I’m special.” I’m not going to take issue with his bizarre contention that saying sorry for the slave trade is why the Iranians grabbed the boarding party from Cornwall. I am,…
Read More Here Comes the Equestrian StatueAll you need to know about Gordon Brown is contained in this story in the Financial Times. Specifically, this response to criticism of his decision to fund the 2% tax cut for basic rate income tax payers by extending the basic rate downwards: The Conservatives argue, of course, that the complex set of income tax…
Read More Gordon Brown: no betterNote that blogging is currently slow, due to a little project of mine that is taking up spare mindshare. The Guardian Column Generator should be operational by next week or thereabouts. Gah, it’s hard to start programming again, but it’s the satisfaction of craft.
Read More Slow BloggingThere’s been a lot of fisking on this blog lately. More than I am happy about – I try to get back to something more positive and discursive, but then, someone comes along and pisses in my pool. Usually a government minister. This trend keeps up. Paul Farrelly MP, Labour member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, recently brought…
Read More You didn’t stand by me – no, not at allOK, so we the first to highlight the fact the military is none too certain about the EFPs-from-Iran meme. Then we were the first to draw attention to how trivially easy they are to make, and how widely available the materials and information required are. Since then, the US Army has actually shown off what…
Read More Feel the steel ballsOne good thing about blogs is that it is difficult to get away with the standard techniques of dishonest debate. Resort to straw-man arguments, and you almost always collect a bucket of shit in short order. In national newspapers’ opinion pages, not so much. Dominic Lawson, Sunday Torygraph editor, wants the world to know he’s…
Read More Dominic Lawson: Intellectually DishonestOn Newsnight last night, Blairite fatster Sion Simon MP demonstrated that he is too stupid to be trusted with glue. And Jeremy Paxman demonstrated that he no longer has any credibility, but we’ll get to that later. Well, let’s deal with the fool before the knave. Simon was on the show to defend the government…
Read More Sion Simon: Ignorant.Whilst I’m on the topic of last night’s TV: what the fucking fuck is fucking Jeremy Paxman doing pretending not to know the basic facts on the Anti-Terrorism, Crime, and Security Act 2001? Recap: this legislation made it possible to deport or lock up foreign nationals on the basis of secret evidence, which did not…
Read More Paxman, and many others: Sick.I recall a fellow student at RHUL, an American, who argued constantly that this-or-that detail of Chinese economic growth meant that democracy in China was imminent and George Bush was right. So thought Thomas Friedman, whose The Lexus and the Olive Tree was at the time a set text on our course (MSc International Relations!).…
Read More Caffeine Bomb!