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Continue reading →: Stony Stratford protest update
Stub Out The Stony Stratford Smoking Ban. The local media have taken an interest and to suit their deadlines (and enhance the publicity) Dick has brought the start time forward to 11am. Please do your best to be there and use your social media accounts to publicise the event.
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Continue reading →: The fight is on
David Cameron's self-serving attack on press freedom – Telegraph. The oligarch supporters of President Yeltsin discovered by accident how to get their drunken but reliably corrupt puppet re-elected, despite national embarrassment at his failings. In desperation, they bought the national TV stations, whose newsdesks informed the political opinions of a…
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Continue reading →: untitled post 3142
Harriet Harman says on Newsnight "we've got to sort out the concentration of power in the media." Hear hear. Let's start by closing the BBC.
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Continue reading →: Our enemies are circling
Phone hacking scandal: enemies of free press are circling – Telegraph. Andrew Gilligan, on the Daily Telegraph website, nails the very point I have been pursuing here: …hateful as the behaviour of some journalists has been, we may now face something even worse. For many in power, or previously in…
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Continue reading →: Rupert Murdoch is a business genius?
When the News of the World (closure of) is the news | Samizdata.net. As Rob comments on the linked story over at Samizdata: Great opportunity to cut staffing costs and still have a Sunday paper, while keeping all the advertisers. How would Murdoch have sacked all those people without a…
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Continue reading →: Only 24 Types?
The 24 Types of Libertarian | Progressive Political Cartoon by Barry Deutsch. Quite amusing, I thought. How I wish I lived in a country where libertarians were influential enough for "progressive" cartoonists to need to mock us. Sadly our politics is not even about how much to extort any more…
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Continue reading →: Politically impartial television?
BBC News – Question Time – Join the Question Time audience. Follow the link to see what it takes to join the Question Time (#bbcqt) audience. Interesting questionnaire, eh? Maybe I should apply to be in the next London audience, suppress my principles and fill in the form dishonestly? What…
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Continue reading →: In a well-populated sewer
David Cameron is in the sewer because of his News International friends – Telegraph Blogs. If, as Peter Oborne asserts, David Cameron is "in the sewer" because of his relationship with Murdoch's minions, then he is not alone. That metaphorical sewer must be as capacious as the metaphorical closet from…
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Continue reading →: German politicians make war on truth
Europe declares war on rating agencies – Telegraph. Do Wolfgang Schauble and Heiner Flassbeck understand what they are saying? They want to "break", "dissolve" or "ban from rating countries" the independent agencies investors rely upon to rate investment risk. Is this what Chancellor Merkel meant when she asserted the primacy…
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Continue reading →: Cameron’s over-inquiring mind
Cameron backs phone hacking probe | Reuters. As m'learned friend Wiggy (aka @_millymoo) explains, there are numerous offences to be investigated in the context of unauthorised access to another's mobile phone account. Those should now be investigated by the police and prosecuted vigorously by the Crown Prosecution Service. A 'public…
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…
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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.