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Littlejohn WAS Right
06 January 2012
Stories were swapped, gossip traded, but there were always boundaries, lines which were never crossed. We all knew the rules.
This is Richard Littlejohn in the Mail reacting to the Filkin report on relations between the police and the press. It’s a fine piece of writing and true; I have been there and done that, though not so often with the police. Littlejohn is right to want the good times back when ‘we all knew … More
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Twittercide or What Exactly was Happening in Diane Abbott’s Head?
05 January 2012
One of the thousands of wonderful moments in Frasier, the greatest sitcom of all, is when our hero asks his brother, Niles, ‘Do you ever have an unexpressed thought?’ There is a moment’s pause before suddenly feline Niles responds, ‘I’m having one now.’
So, Diane Abbott, do you ever have an unexpressed thought? Or, more specifically, do you ever have an untweeted thought? Was it a lonely impulse of delight (Yeats, do pay attention) that … More
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Unbundling Shirky
05 January 2012
Clay Shirky has many gifts, cogent prose is not one of them. Great Gapper tweeted plaintively about this piece, ‘Maybe I’m being slow but I don’t really understand what he’s saying’, a sentiment with which, at first reading, I wholeheartedly agreed (except for the ‘maybe I’m being slow’). On second reading, however, I did manage to detect a point which is, I think, as follows. News cannot finance itself on the … More
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Stephen Lawrence and the Likes of Us
04 January 2012
My mind has been paralysed by the Stephen Lawrence trial. Immediately, everybody seemed to say everything that could be said as if with one voice. For a while, I thought nobody was going to make the link to Leveson and then along came Jonathan Freedland. Quite right too. But, finally, my attention is drawn to this, an against-the-tide rant by Brendan O’Neill, editor of Spiked. First things first, anybody who uses the word ‘problematise’ … More
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Best Lunch Ever
04 January 2012
Sorry, lunch is in the air and I have to reproduce this from a chapter in Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s book which is being part-published online. Nassim is listing some important thinkers.
John Gray, contemporary political philosopher and essayist who stands against human hubris and has been fighting the prevailing ideas that enlightenment is a panacea –treating a certain category of thinkers as enlightenment fundamentalists. Furthermore he showed repeatedly how what we call scientific progress can be … More
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Paul Wilmott’s Menu
03 January 2012
And, while on the subject of lunch, my great friend Paul Wilmott, the only funny quant in the business, has a new business card. Turn it over and it reads:
Gin martini, straight up, with a twist
Sparkling
Medium rare
Red
Both ice cream and custard, please
Milk, no sugar
Says it all really.
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Drink: The Heroes of the Genre
03 January 2012
That has started me thinking about drinking in general – probably because I am not currently doing it. It’s hard not to have a soft spot for the heroes of the genre. While interviewing Kingsley Amis years ago I noticed a clock in his living room move to 5.30 – then the usual opening time for pubs – and, without looking at the clock or a watch, he immediately said, ‘Are you a drinking man?’ It was … More
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Bring Back the Long Lunch
03 January 2012
Over Christmas an entrepreneurial friend suggested the still emerging incompetence, avarice and criminal iniquities of the London financial system can all be attributed to the death of the long lunch. In the spirit of the season, I agreed at once but only later did I realise the depth of his wisdom. The long lunch – understood as an aspect of a way of life and a world view – may, indeed, have prevented the crash of 2008 and lightened, if … More
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Thatcher in State
30 December 2011
On the left Martin Kettle opposes a state funeral for Margaret, as did, on the right, Peter Oborne. The reasons are broadly the same: she was divisive and state funerals are for people on whose legacy we can supposedly all agree: generals – Nelson, Wellington, geniuses – Newton, Darwin, and grand old men – Churchill, Gladstone. In peace, Churchill was also divisive, but, as Oborne observes he was ‘the symbol of our lonely resistance … More
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Christmas Signs and Wonders
28 December 2011
Being easily embarrassed and neither as good-natured as Nige nor as devout as Andrew, I find Christmas in particular and religion in general tricky. Until, that is, I am confronted with their singular power and logic, at which point I generally start crying, a habit I find even more annoying than do those around me. This is nothing to do with belief – I am a militant agnostic – and everything to do with … More
- A Decision Taken at Puberty
- Penguins in Shorts
- What’s Wrong with Bertrand Russell?
- City Life
- Sentimentality and Meerkats
- Warming is True but Dead
- Dabbler Grilling.
- Super-Reductionism
- For Tim Buckley
- Sullivan on Inequality 2
- Jacobean Blood
- The Soul of Ron Mueck
- Extremophiles: Life on the Edge
- The Opposite of Faith is not Doubt, it is Certainty
- David Hare’s Rattigan
- Planet Hunting
- The Once and Future Tee-Mo
- The Truth of Islam
- Soul Searching
- Overthrowing Chomsky
