BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN It is one of those unremarked truths, visible to anyone who troubles to look, that the character of a nation can be deduced from the state of its boundaries. I found this thought pressing upon me the other afternoon, halted by the spectacle of a common hedge sparrow at work. The scene was a Devon lane, bordered by a hedgerow of the … Continue reading On the Wisdom of Hedgerows
BY DANIEL JUPP It’s easy to see how tyranny depends on forgetting. As tyranny grows, people forget that their political opposition are human beings. Tyrants classify certain groups as innately evil, and these groups, whether convenient scapegoats or actual rivals, are then a legitimate target for any kind of mistreatment. The sad truth is that whilst we were reminded constantly that right wing nationalism was … Continue reading The Radical Lure of Doing Good
BY JOHN DREWRY Billions of people are probably now familiar with the promise ‘You will own nothing, and you will be happy’. When I first heard it, I remember reacting with a mixture of incredulity, indignation and derisory humour. I thought, that is the aspiration of a madman, and is definitely irrational. Even if Herr Schwab helped to manage the dastardly realisation of ensuring we … Continue reading You Vill Be Heppy
BY NIALL McCRAE How football clubs are taken from local communities and how supporters fight back ‘You make me happy when skies are grey’, sang the fans of Morton FC (quite appropriately in the west of Scotland climate). But the last line of the adapted popular song, ‘please don’t take my Morton away’, became awfully prescient when the club was threatened with a move to … Continue reading Uprooted by Moneymen
BY ROCHELLE BLAKEMAN “Minerva save us from the cloying syrup of coercive compassion! What feminism does not need, it seems to me, is an endless recycling of Doris Day Fifties cliches about noble womanhood.” Camille Paglia, Sex, Art and American Culture It didn’t matter whether you were intrigued, indifferent or making a conscious effort to avoid it at all costs, last month’s Veganuary campaign was … Continue reading Ecofeminism is Ecosexism
BY PHLEGYAS As we watch private equity companies bid for Morrisons’ supermarket, the Chinese buy up Cambridge University by pumping cash and professors into the Colleges and the Church of England abandon its clergy and college-based training in favour of 10,000 lay-led churches , we received this investment report from our favourite City analyst, Tapyer Nose. BUY recommendation for YIPPEE! the special purpose acquisition company … Continue reading The Four Thousand Bagger
THE CITY GRUMP “Current existing systems massively reward high status well connected people” As usual Dominic Cummings hit the nail on the head when answering a question on checks and balances in front of the Science and Technology Committee last week (I sometimes fantasise over what could have been achieved if the Blessed Margaret had worked with Cummings instead of our current dissembling PM). I … Continue reading What’s Eating British Capitalism?
BY BERNADETTE SPOFFORTH Guest Writer Bernadette Spofforth on the West’s China dependencies China’s exploitation of consumerism is a virus, but we created it. I have many experiences of business in China, over 25 years in fact, from dealing with small family factories to multibillion-dollar factories; good ones, who at least attempt to follow ethical working practices, to ones that hide child workers before inspections. They … Continue reading China’s Consumerist Virus
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN While those two Americans in their seventies take an impressively long time to maintain an election, risibly both are taking credit for the new Covid vaccine manufactured by Pfizer (ironically a firm best known for producing the world-renowned recreational drug Viagra). Just remember that – whatever you are told or blocked from seeing on Twitter – these politicians were nowt to do … Continue reading Cigar for the Capitalist Vaccine
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN In 1972 in Venezuela a meteorite killed a cow, but no one knew about it for years because the farmer ate the cow and then used the meteorite as a doorstop. It is curious how some people are drawn towards publicity and others, for whatever reason, shy away from it. It can be the same within the ebb and flow of British … Continue reading Red Underground
