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Continue reading →: How Progressive Aren’t You?
Interactive Quiz: How Progressive Are You?. Follow the link to try yourself. This was my score (and I am proud of it). h/t Mars Hill
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Continue reading →: On the road again
Last week was great fun. I was attending the 20th MIPIM event in Cannes (I have been to the last 19). I decided to make something special of it by driving Vittoria from the North. After stopping in London to pick up a friend we headed for Eurotunel and the…
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Continue reading →: Sporting achievment, good. Educational achievment, bad.
Three As no longer enough for university – Times Online. Today, on page 70 (and the back page headline) the Times celebrates a spectacular double achievement in swimming. Two British women in the same race broke the 400 metre world record. Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington came second to bronze medallist…
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Continue reading →: Food to blame for 100% of our crimes
'Cocaine to blame for 41% of our crimes' | Metro.co.uk. Statistics are a dangerous thing. Greater Manchester Police drug-tested 1,000 people arrested for violent offences in the seven month period to March last year. Half tested positive for drugs and of these, 86% tested positive for cocaine. Had they tested…
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Continue reading →: Quite so
"Deregulated" :: A Very British Dude. Jackart shares my irritation at the idea that more regulation of a heavily-regulated industry could have saved us from the present unpleasantness.
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Continue reading →: Ricky Tomlinson fights to clear his name
TV star Ricky Tomlinson fights to clear his name – The Scotsman. Oh, the vanity of "celebrity." If he didn't keep bringing it up, I fear no-one would remember the viciousness of the picketing in that long-ago strike. As I understand it, Mr Tomlinson denies the violence occurred, rather than…
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Continue reading →: A clean slate
I was driving down to Cannes last Monday with a client and friend. He's a qualified lawyer but is no longer practising. En route, we played an interesting mind game. We asked ourselves, if every English statute were repealed, how many (or rather how few) Acts of Parliament we would…
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Continue reading →: Ski lift blogging
Just because it is technically possible doesn't make it necessary or even desirable!
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Continue reading →: Light blogging
I apologize for light blogging. I had hoped to have more access to wifi/3G this week. Normal service will resume shortly. Meanwhile, here's the view from my seat in a ski station bar.
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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The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
I’m an optimistic person but also a practical one. We need to take action and waiting for some deity to…