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Continue reading →: “best-performing” towns
Link: ‘Cornwall best-performing seaside town for house price rise’ – Telegraph. Britain has many problems, but the least explicable for me is the national obsession with house prices. The linked article is, when you think about it, really rather disgusting. Shelter is a basic human need, yet according to the…
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Continue reading →: Chelsea sack Avram Grant as manager
Link: Chelsea sack Avram Grant as manager – Football News – Telegraph. Politicians think theirs is a tough game, but is it really? I wonder what goes through the mind of our football following Prime Minister when he reads of Chelsea’s ruthless sacking of Avram Grant? Grant led his…
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Continue reading →: When positive thinking goes wrong
Link: US elections: Hillary Clinton apologises for assassination gaffe – Telegraph. I dislike Hillary Clinton, both as a politician and as a human being, but I feel sorry for her this morning. I understand why she made this terrible error. Self-belief is a necessary but not sufficient pre-condition of success.…
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Continue reading →: Tories take Crewe & Nantwich
Link: BBC NEWS | Politics | Tories snatch Crewe from Labour. This is a fairly amazing result. I could hardly have been more wrong. I shall not even try to think about what it would mean if translated into General Election terms; it’s just too ridiculous. I can’t help feeling…
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Continue reading →: Chelsea fans battle police after defeat (but not in Moscow)
Link: Champions League final: Chelsea fans battle police after defeat to Manchester United – Telegraph. The biggest change in Britain in my lifetime has been the development of a culture which excuses all kinds of misconduct by reference to "social factors", "alcohol", "drugs" or whatever. I have never bought it.…
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Continue reading →: Tories pledge to curb use of CCTV cameras
Link: Tories pledge to curb use of CCTV cameras – Telegraph. David Davis is no libertarian, so this news is quite a surprise. Another good policy from the Tories though. Credit where it’s due. What a shame that the question of whether CCTV monitoring of innocent citizens is wrong, is…
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Continue reading →: Two million Britons emigrate in 10 years
Link: Two million Britons emigrate in 10 years – Telegraph. It requires courage, enterprise and optimism to uproot yourself from the comforts of the culture in which you grew up and live somewhere else in the world. I am convinced that the Labour Government has systematically given Britain a "people…
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Continue reading →: Lies, Sex and BBC Drama
Link: Baroness Thatcher tried to seduce Sir Edward Heath for Conservative seat, new BBC drama claims – Telegraph. Though the British Left hates her for appealing to the working classes more than they ever did, they have never been able to find any evidence of Margaret Thatcher behaving in an…
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Continue reading →: Sport and Alcohol; a marriage made in heaven or hell?
Link: Cook fifty fails to brighten rainy day – News Archive – Latest News – Lord’s. Thanks to the generosity of a client, I spent yesterday – my last full day in England for a while – at the very heart of Englishry; Lord’s Cricket Ground. Although little cricket was…
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Continue reading →: Afghan aeroplane hijacker is working at British Airways training centre
Link: Afghan aeroplane hijacker is working at British Airways training centre – Telegraph. Today, as I return to Russia, I shall face the manifold annoyances and humiliations of "security theatre" as losers in uniforms at the airport revel in their power to call me "mate," give me hell and generally…
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…
[…] – Tom Paine […]
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First post (in case you want to read it from the beginning)
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.