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Continue reading →: There are two ways of looking at this
Cowardly Bullying on the Web – Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – Dale & Co. Am I alone in believing that, such are the appallingly illiberal beliefs (in the classical, correct sense of the word 'liberal') of Ms Alibhai-Brown, she would be subjected to far greater abuse on the internet were she not…
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Continue reading →: Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson
Today I finished reading Walter Isaacson's excellent biography of Steve Jobs. As a long-time Apple user, I was vaguely aware of most of the key facts of Jobs' life, but Isaacson has pulled it all together and filled it out with data from 40 interviews with the man himself and…
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Continue reading →: The Best Bet Is Freedom
The Best Bet Is Freedom | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty. Jason Riddle, over at the Foundation for Economic Freedom's site, compares politics with casino gambling and concludes convincingly that the latter is a better bet. There is no such thing as a magical public fund from which political…
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Continue reading →: Real art vs the other stuff
Strictly For The Birds… | Orphans of Liberty. I recently asked why The Guardian was not more supportive of the reputation of William Shakespeare, our greatest native genius. JuliaM has hit upon the answer over at the gloomily-named GroupBlog, Orphans of Liberty. Real art, in Guardian Land, is stuff no-one wants…
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Continue reading →: Come the revolution, don’t say you weren’t told
This pantomime of choice has created a mess, and an awful paradox | Deborah Orr | Comment is free | The Guardian. Deborah Orr of The Guardian has been suffering from breast cancer. I recently lost my wife to that disease so I am primed to sympathise with her. But…
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Continue reading →: Tom Paine is no more
A friend recently alerted me to the quaintly excellent Seven Stars pub, a survivor of the Great Fire of London, and its resident cat, Tom Paine. I blogged about him here. Tonight I ventured over there to meet a friend for a pint or three and to catch a glimpse of…
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Continue reading →: Join Old Holborn on his walk this Saturday
Old Holborn: Old Holborn is going for a walk. I shall be there this Saturday in Trafalgar Square at high noon (though I shall not be in Hallowe’en costume). I am just looking forward to having a drink with free men and women. Given the submissiveness and/or indifference to the…
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Continue reading →: England lives
Taking a bracing walk through a Warwickshire village yesterday, I noticed first that (it being where the Gunpowder Plotters plotted) there are several houses named after them. As they have been considered the vilest of traitors for much of our history, with small children encouraged to burn effigies on November…
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Continue reading →: Why doesn’t the Guardian defend this humble, disadvantaged boy?
Cribsheet 28.10.11 | Education | guardian.co.uk. The new film Anonymous revives the old claim that William Shakespeare, Immortal Bard of Avon, was a mere front man for some better-educated writer. As the film-maker admits, it's not that he has any evidence that – as he portrays it – the Earl…
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.