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Continue reading →: A further health update
Last Monday went better than I could reasonably have hoped. I went into hospital at 06.30 am to be prepped for theatre. The procedure was interesting and I remained conscious throughout under mild sedation. A probe was inserted into my right wrist and fed through into my heart. My consultant…
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Continue reading →: Health Update
Some, I hope premature, final thoughts – THE LAST DITCH. Having raised some concerns in the linked post, I thought I should update you, gentle readers, on my health. It took longer to see a consultant than I thought but that was my fault. I entirely forgot that my health…
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Continue reading →: Donald Trump just won the greatest jury verdict in history
Donald Trump just won the greatest jury verdict in history. Laws and legal processes should be independent of politics. If the cases against President-elect Trump are now dropped, as it's being suggested they will be, that is an admission that they were politically-motivated. To bring a case against a political…
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Continue reading →: They still don’t get it – spiked
They still don’t get it – spiked. The linked article is right. They (the woke left) still don't get it. I hope they never do. One of my leftist friends prefaced a phone call this morning with a whole minute of "how could that happen?" about the US election result.…
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Continue reading →: Trust
No lasting institutions can be built without trust. When I worked in Russia, I saw that a low trust society could be very creative when it came to entrepreneurship, but that it was impossible to build banks, insurance companies, pension funds etc. That was an opportunity for my City of…
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Continue reading →: Some, I hope premature, final thoughts
At Craven Cottage for the Villa game, the very modest activity of walking from our taxi to the stadium left me flushed, breathless and near to collapse – to the alarm of my companions. I made it home safely and have booked an appointment with my GP this week. I…
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Continue reading →: Labour appoints 200 ‘cronies’ to Civil Service
Labour appoints 200 ‘cronies’ to Civil Service. In relation to the linked article above, my criticism is not actually of Labour. Rewarding the party's cronies and cementing leftist control of the "Deep State" (the modern name for what – when it was conservative and patriotic – was known as the…
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Continue reading →: Remember 7.10
When I returned to Britain after twenty years abroad, I found myself widowed and living alone in a London very different from the place I was working when I went abroad in 1992. I would ride the 94 bus to town, only hearing the English language on the recorded announcements.…
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Continue reading →: Legalising assisted suicide: Theory and Practice
Legalising assisted suicide would be a profound moral error – spiked. One of the fundamental ideas of libertarianism is self-ownership. If you have legal capacity to decide (i.e. you are adult and sane) then you can do what you like with yourself and your body. If you want to mutilate…
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Continue reading →: The Future
Miss Paine the Elder and her life partner have chosen the name of my granddaughter – due to join us on December 9th – but will not share it with anyone until she is actually born. So for now she is codenamed "Boudicca" – Miss Paine the Younger's jocular suggestion…
THE LAST DITCH
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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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My cars are just tools although I do get attached to them and have fond memories of a couple of…
I did get to ride in her and she did add cachet for me with my neighbours by being in…
It would have been easy to fulfil an open desire so why keep it secret? Surely the whole advantage of…
My secret desire was to be taken for a spin in her. Alas!
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First post (in case you want to read it from the beginning)
The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
I’m going to go millennial and rent what I need when I need it. If that doesn’t work for me,…