BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN A book is a pact between freedom and form. Its pages, while bound, invite the unbinding of thought. To open a cover is to accept an invitation to a silent, limitless argument—with the author, with the self, with the world. The book’s physicality is a necessary concession to the material world, a vessel for the immaterial. It is a sacred technology precisely … Continue reading The Weight of Doctrine
BY MUDYARD KIPLING It is a great misfortune in life to be one’s own secretary and his employer at the same time. The man so afflicted finds himself as if torn by two different dogs at once. If the secretary is incompetent, as in my case he is, then his employer feels the anger of frustration and delay — why on Earth were these simple tasks … Continue reading On Being One’s Own Secretary
BY STEWART SLATER The Columnists’ Paradox is that the more one writes, the less one need be read. We all have our relatively fixed biases and a reasonably finite store of stories and references, and it does not take too long (longer than my own writing “career” to date though, obviously…) for those to become sufficiently well-known to readers that they can predict with almost … Continue reading Awfully Clever
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN In the airless confines of the tube, the world outside felt distant. I sat still, encased in the metal canister, time stretching like a taut string, ready to snap. I had been sat there since Moorgate. Nearby, a Salafi with a bulky backpack glared at us kufrs, his ankle socks a giveaway, disdain etched upon his face, his dishdasha an oddity for … Continue reading Circle Line
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN My great-grandfather was completely deaf (or pretended to be so), yet he managed to help keep the Conservatives in power for many years, despite a brief interlude under Ramsay MacDonald. His daughter, my grandmother, was also profoundly deaf. In her later years, she walked around with a portable microphone linked to her hearing aids, which she innocently placed in the middle of … Continue reading Embracing Deafness
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Watching the FA Cup Final on Saturday, it was fascinating studying the body language and facial expressions of Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag. Ten Hag knew that, against the odds, his side had already beaten Manchester City earlier in the season but that the chances of repeating this feat were slim. His furrowed brow was a permanent feature during the match … Continue reading Checkmate
BY FRANK WRIGHT Why is our culture so corrupted? When we are compelled to think about the news, which is a parlous matter altogether, it is useful to consider what is not there. It is easy to be entrained, like the clock of Christian Huygens, to harmonise with the tumult of the news cycle. Have a look at the cycle path. What it omits is … Continue reading The State of the Self
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN It’s not unreasonable to imagine a future where AI foxes are hunted by packs of hounds, where the meat and fish markets depend to a substantial degree on cultured meat produced in bioreactors. Why not? Let’s open our minds. A century ago, few would have thought credible the technological advances that have been made since. So why should any of us be … Continue reading Shoddy Messiahs
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The Genetic Fallacy is used by those short cutting their way to triumph in debate or – more often these days – defending the indefensible. How does this fallacy work? Regardless of the merits of a proposal or argument, the proposal or argument gets shot down because of whence it heralds. In the eyes of the user of the fallacy, it is … Continue reading The Genetic Fallacy
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN I was chatting with a Venezuelan friend the other day on WhatsApp. He remarked how lucky I was to be in Britain – to be able to do anything I wanted, eat anything I wanted and say anything I wanted. At the time, given the fact that my friend had just chewed through a single arepa for lunch and I had just … Continue reading Species of Oppression
BY NICK CARTWRIGHT This has been a very odd General Election run-up so far. To be frank, I am left with more questions than answers: Hypocrisy. The Liberal Democrats are pledging a £100 Billion Climate Fund and have an election pact with the Greens in some seats. So why have I received – 16 so far – leaflets from them? And nowhere on these leaflets … Continue reading A Most Peculiar Election
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The Oppressor and the Oppressed. This is the way that those Hard Left Labour people think. Call their disease liberation theory or postmodern neo Marxism. Call it what you will. This is the rigid prism through which Labour acolytes in Britain in May 2019 see the world. How it must be draining. Just as reading the output from the likes of David … Continue reading The Prism
8:00 – I made a snowman. 8:10 – A feminist passed by and asked me why I didn’t make a snow woman. 8:15 – So, I made a snow woman. 8:17 – My feminist neighbour complained about the snow woman’s voluptuous chest saying it objectified snow women everywhere. 8:20 – The gay couple living nearby threw a hissy fit and moaned it could have been two … Continue reading It Snowed Last Night
BY MANDY BALDWIN The famous Christmas fair at the Champs Elysee in Paris has been cancelled. The graceful steps at York Minster, where a church has stood since long before the original jihadis first rampaged, have been blocked by concrete bollards. Armed police will patrol Christmas venues in pretty, old towns all across Europe, where the cobbled streets are now blighted by defences against killers … Continue reading Nativeity
BY ROBERT PERKINS Lately my therapist told me that I showed a lot of similarities in my symptoms with those of refugees who had been tortured, whom he has treated over the years. I have what’s known as Complex PTSD. A How would you feel about this, if a medical professional with over 30 years’ experience said this to you or about someone you loved? … Continue reading Every Minute, Hour & Day
