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Continue reading →: A mad rush to Mantua
We set ourselves too hard a task today. This is meant to be fun and relaxing. Mostly it was, but a couple of delays in leaving Switzerland due to accidents ahead of us meant that we fell behind. As much of our journey was on Swiss roads, we couldn't make…
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Continue reading →: To Lucerne via Saarschleife and Strasbourg
A Ferrari factory tour and the Tazio Nuvolari Museum in Mantua seem romantic enough destinations to me but one of our friends last night suggested a nature ramble might be a more appropriate honeymoon activity. So after breakfast this morning we set off to the BaumWipfelPfad or "Treetop Walk" at…
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Continue reading →: Luxembourg
Perhaps it’s not an obvious destination for a European road trip but we have friends living in the Grand Duchy and wanted to visit them. So after breakfasting on Belgian waffles in the main square in Bruges we hit the road south. Our first problem was that an inconsiderate hotel…
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Continue reading →: On the road again — on honeymoon
After only four months, Mrs Paine II (an Indian citizen) has finally obtained her Schengen visa and this morning we set out in Speranza on our European road trip honeymoon. We crossed the Channel on the Eurotunnel train this morning and were in Bruges in time to take a boat…
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Continue reading →: In which I urge you to overcome your sense of futility and vote this Thursday
I thought taking part in the Leave march to Parliament Square might have been my last political act. As I wrote afterwards, it actually gave me hope again. The old political tribes in Britain are in trouble and deserve to be. They have long taken their members, supporters and voters…
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Continue reading →: It’s no longer about Brexit
I joined the final leg of the March to Leave from Fulham to Parliament Square today. I did so with a heavy heart. Parliament is unable to agree terms to leave the EU, but unwilling to leave without an agreement. That is currently the only way available to it to implement…
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Continue reading →: Blog meet oop North
For the first time in years I met James Higham of the Nourishing Obscurity and Orphans of Liberty blogs for lunch and drinks (Virgin Marys for me on my health regime) this weekend. I am visiting family in my home town in North Wales. Wanting to catch up with James and…
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Continue reading →: Living peacefully under a hostile regime
Back in the ‘90s, when I lived with my family in Warsaw, we had a lovely young babysitter who took care of the then very young Misses Paine. We got to know her well as she also came on family holidays with us. One evening when she came over she…
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Continue reading →: Postmodernist truth
To oversimplify post-modernist moral philosophy (or more accurately, amoral philosophy) there is no objective truth. One's stance in relation to the world is determined by one's class, sexual, gender, ethnic and other "identities" and – in the most up-to-date version – by the intersections between them. I may deceive myself…
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Continue reading →: Beyond fake news
Catching up with The Q yesterday I mentioned a good friend I had hoped he would meet at my wedding was not coming because, as a devout Catholic, he disapproves of our match. Given the age difference he believes I am sinfully selfish in denying the future Mrs P2 both 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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One can only hope his neighbours, fellow lodge members (?) etc give him the cold shoulder.
The problem is that they already know about the blog and some read it. Why is that an issue? If…
Conversationally, I already operate on NATO “no first strike” principles. I am not going to start a political discussion with…
Why don’t you stick with what you are doing on the blogs but simply withdraw from discussion on politics with…
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Blogspot Archive Mar 2005 – Sep 2006
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First post (in case you want to read it from the beginning)
The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
They are servants. Just not of the public. He gets a full pension because he did his job for his…