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Continue reading →: Britain a dangerous place to do business?
Link: Britain a dangerous place to do business, OECD to warn – Telegraph. See how the mighty have fallen. As a lawyer doing business in emerging markets, some of which are less than favourably rated by Transparency International, I sometimes have to ask local business people to sign provisions in…
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Continue reading →: Pensioner ordered to stop mowing grass
Link: Pensioner ordered to stop mowing grass because it’s too tidy – Telegraph. The most interesting part of this everyday story of petty tyranny is the wording of the council’s comment to the press "We apologise if he feels the letter he received from us is heavy-handed. We are happy…
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Continue reading →: Wonderland
The last few weeks have been disorienting. I have been through recessions before and this feels only slightly different. Yet people really seem to believe – and to want to believe – it is the end of capitalism. To me there is only one difference to previous recessions; the level…
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Continue reading →: Has the truth sunk in yet?
I had an interesting conversation with a member of my family yesterday. She handles mortgage approvals for one of the few institutions still lending. She was telling me they are being more prudent. They closed 25% of their mortgage call centres at the beginning of the crisis and they are…
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Continue reading →: It’s Sunday, let’s think about something other than the crisis
http://embed.break.com/NTg2MTgyClumsy Best Man Ruins Wedding – Watch more free videos
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Continue reading →: Philippe Starck on designing a toilet brush
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf I can think of no better insight into what it is to be French; no better illustration of what it is to be civilised. And he’s funny too. He says that he is not intelligent. He says he designs to prove he has a right to exist. But there…
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Continue reading →: A toxic culture of blame
Many years ago, a driver in Liverpool was plagued by local children who would jump on his truck as he was manoeuvring. He was always chasing them away. One day a boy was clinging to the back when he reversed up to a wall and was crushed and killed. He…
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Continue reading →: The sheep and the wolves
Link: Gordon Brown hails £500 billion bank rescue plan – Telegraph. I am no economist, so perhaps a reader can help with the questions I have today. If people are unwilling to lend, how does reducing interest rates help? If our problem is that too many have borrowed too much,…
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Continue reading →: Why not vote for this project?
Link: International Medical Corps Matched With Top 25 American Express Members Project Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children. Why wouldn’t you?. This is off-topic for my blog (and I am pretty suspicious of the long-term effects of foreign aid in Africa). However, the organiser is a private charity trying to…
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 
You cannot have a reasonable argument about any of this because we are not allowed to make statements that could…