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Continue reading →: My first new city for a while
Beijing Official Website International – eBeijing.gov.cn. Travel becomes boring when you are used to it, but a new city is always exciting. I am in Beijing (still known to the French and Russians as Pekin) for the first time at an event which may prove to be a blogger's nightmare.…
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Continue reading →: A hoon, or merely a chump?
Geoff Hoon 'checked phone during Iraq war memorial' – Telegraph. Is it any wonder his surname has become one of the British blogosphere's favourite euphemisms? Yet, in truth, Hoon (the only Labour minister with whom I have had the misfortune to break bread) is only displaying Labour's bog standard attitude…
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Continue reading →: I’ll only be happy if banning is banned
I'll only be happy if smoking is banned | Duncan Bannatyne | Comment is free | The Observer. You need read no more of this appalling article than this; "Smoking should be banned in cars, and particularly any vehicle with children in it. On a school visit I met a…
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Continue reading →: Pop memories
Late evening listening – the evolution of music | nourishing obscurity. I was at a party last night with my soon-to-be-ex-team in Moscow. It was at a way-too-cool-for-me bar and I was already feeling old when a kindly, well-meaning (and jollier than I had ever realised) colleague made things worse…
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Continue reading →: Being elected while black
Obama's Nobel Farce – The Daily Beast. The right-wing blogosphere is understandably angry about the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. Surely that prize, its credibility already much stained, can now never be taken seriously again? How could he possibly have earned it, given that he was…
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Continue reading →: The central problem of politics
Those running schools, nurseries and children's homes know that paedophiles are attracted to the opportunities presented by such work. However, the law of unintended consequences means that making a fuss about the problem and treating every applicant for a job as a potential paedophile will deter non-paedophiles, making the situation…
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Continue reading →: Will the Conservative Government tell the truth about British Education?
British students' grasp of English worse than foreign counterparts, reveals study – Telegraph. Margaret Thatcher's greatest failure was in education policy. As it turned out, breaking the coercive power of trade unions and setting the economy free was a waste of time, if not accompanied by a corresponding purge of…
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Continue reading →: Beautiful, but not for me…
I was invited to the UK launch of the Maserati GranCabrio, the convertible version of the GranTurismo, the car I am lucky enough to drive. Recently launched at Frankfurt, the one extant example is now on a world tour in advance of the the model going on sale next April.…
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Continue reading →: What is the best we can hope for from the Conservatives?
The Conservative Conference in Manchester is effectively the beginning of the Tory campaign for the 2010 General Election. We can confidently expect that Labour will pay the price in that election for its epic fail as a government. Once again Labour will leave Britain with worse education, more structural unemployment,…
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Continue reading →: Is Tim Worstall weird?
I realise that I’m weird about this. Tim Worstall articulates my concern about this case very well. That doctors should let a depressed woman die for fear of being struck off if they contradicted her "living will" is appalling. A physically healthy 26 year old who chooses to die is,…
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.