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Continue reading →: Equality does not equal fairness
The Spirit Level Delusion: Fact-checking the Left's New Theory of Everything: Amazon.co.uk: Christopher John Snowdon: Books. I am reading Christopher Snowden's book, The Spirit Level Delusion, which sets out to rebut – graph by graph, statistic by statistic – the thesis of Wilkinson and Pickett's work The Spirit Level. These…
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Continue reading →: The terrorists who work for us
Air cargo bombs: Controlled reaction | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian. No-one rose to the bait of my smoking, helmetless, biking babies post. It's a shame, as I was looking forward to reading libertarian responses to a baby being taught to smoke, or being taken motorbike riding…
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Continue reading →: Another one bites the dust
Mr Eugenides: The last post. I was in a good mood this morning. The sun is shining, there's a day of rest ahead, and Mrs P. (who was very ill this week) is chirpy again. Mr Eugenides has spoiled it. The Devil (who has the pleasure to know him personally)…
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Continue reading →: Smoking on motorbikes
Continuing my theme of distentangling honest-to-Stalin Leftism from good old-fashioned British Puritanism, I was looking for an image to illustrate something Mrs P. and I noticed yesterday. Out on the town in Shanghai, we saw many motorcyclists riding (legally) without helmets and smoking en route. Oddly enough, I couldn't find…
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Continue reading →: The Guardian gets it, at last
Hideously diverse Britain: School success – the Chinese way | UK news | The Guardian. Whenever anyone told us that certain ethnic groups do badly in school because of discrimination, my wife and I asked (based on her experiences teaching in state schools) "…if teachers are conventionally racist, why do…
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Continue reading →: Compulsory debt?
Penalty for graduates who pay off student loans early – Telegraph. This government is so much in love with debt that it wants to impose an early-redemption penalty on students who pay off their loans before they are due. That's bad enough but it's not a new idea. Long-term lenders…
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Continue reading →: How real Leftists approach alcohol
Mrs P. and I ventured out for an afternoon stroll and ended up at a bar. Sitting under a canopy outside on a warm, rainy evening, we did some people-watching here in the Peoples' Republic. It was all very enjoyable, despite being surrounded by (gasp!) smokers. Picking up the drinks…
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Continue reading →: Hard cases and bad law?
Divorce laws should not be made by the grotesquely rich | Catherine Bennett | Comment is free | The Observer. Pace Catherine Dorothea Bennett, Oxford grad., former Baroness Sackville and current squeeze of by-no-means-short-of-a-bob-or-two John Humphreys, laws are not made by those who are ("grotesquely" or otherwise) rich. In England…
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Continue reading →: Now, about that £81bn…
About that £81bn. I have been rattling on here and elsewhere about how the government is unable to do what is required to public spending because – post Labour – the payroll vote is electorally decisive. Perhaps I am wrong. If the linked post at the Adam Smith Institute is…
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Continue reading →: So much for machismo
Student becomes new police chief in Mexican town | World news | guardian.co.uk.
THE LAST DITCH
Your blogger
Tom is a retired international lawyer. He was a partner in a City of London law firm and spent almost twenty years abroad serving clients from all over the world.
Returning to London on retirement in 2011, he was dismayed to discover how much liberty had been lost in the UK while he was away.
He’s a classical liberal (libertarian, if you must) who, like his illustrious namesake, considers that
“…government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”
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There are many reasons they’re not passed down, Tom. The Triune code, laid out in scripture in all reputable versions…
I’ve always tried to live my life doing no wrong but life isn’t like that so you make compromised but…
Hate to tell you this, but it’s not going to end until you end it. You think people to whom…
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The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
A little bird tweeted in my ear that it was time to come over and see how things are.