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Continue reading →: “From programming bits, to programming atoms…”
http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf I have said it before and will say it again, TED is one of the best sites on the internet. I turn to it for relief from the pessimism of the political world. While politicians continue to find ways to mess up even the simplest things, some scientists not…
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Continue reading →: We can’t afford our own defence?
Link: Bloomberg.com: U.K. & Ireland. Just when the full extent of Francis Fukuyama’s idiocy is finally becoming apparent, the UK government’s financial incompetence is compromising the defence of the realm. Right now, the government should be cutting every public sector job involving tasks too vague for concrete tests of successful…
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Continue reading →: What the Left tells you about the Olympics tells you about the Left
Link: Stephen Moss, Kira Cochrane and Simon Burnton provide the answers to intriguing questions about the Olympics | Sport | The Guardian. The Guardian’s Q&A about the Olympics today is psychologically revealing. Individual Leftists may be sport fans, but collectively it’s a political problem for them. If you believe in…
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Continue reading →: Has the Prime Minister had a nervous breakdown?
Mock the Week is maturing into an excellent satire show. If satire is returning, a Conservative government must be imminent. During Conservative governments we get such wonders as Spitting Image and Not the Nine o’clock News. During Labour – as the luvvies refuse to attack "their boys" – we get…
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Continue reading →: The chequered flag
We have just returned safely home from the South of France. Vittoria sang her way across one and two-thirds countries without mishap. The work of Auto Palace in Cannes (merci, messieurs) was as professional and thorough as it seemed at the time. All her computerised systems functioned flawlessly. Our only…
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Continue reading →: Health and Stupidity
Link: Health and Safety prevents winding of town clock – Telegraph. I don’t buy the sincerity of the town council’s quoted regrets. How can they believe an assessment of the risk as serious of a task which has been performed without mishap for 150 years? Sometimes it seems we are…
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Continue reading →: A pit stop
Ah the joys of touring. The view is from my seat in the Maserati dealership in Cannes. Vittoria is in the rudest mechanical health but her inboard computers seem a tad confused. They report scary but non-existent faults, demand to be taken to dealers, shut down the cruise control randomly…
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Continue reading →: The Sith fall to the blogging Jedi
Link: Think tank boss resigns after Gordon Brown links criticised – Telegraph. The Smith Institute is a scam. It purports to be a charity in order to defraud the Treasury. The Treasury has cooperated because the fraud was for the political benefit of the then Chancellor, now Prime Minister. Resignations…
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Continue reading →: Idyll time
This post was a test of the Typepad gizmo for iPhone. It worked rather too well in that the photo I snapped (of the view from poolside at our resort hotel’s spa)was posted before I realised and before I could add some text! By way of explanation "Idle time" is…
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Continue reading →: Of Lyon, her most famous son and of excellence in general
Link: en – Site Officiel de la Ville de Lyon. We have hurtled through Lyon on our previous trips to the Côte d’Azur but this year we decided to take a couple of days to look around. It’s a beautiful city, straddling the rivers Saône and Rhône. It’s the…
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…