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Tag: Politics

How to be a Liberal

You can’t say that it lacks ambition. Ian Dunt’s “How to be a Liberal“:

tells the forgotten story of the advance of liberalism and the events which led to its current retreat.

And, by and large, it succeeds. I’m not qualified to say how complete it is — he may have missed out half of the story for all I know — but from Descartes to Mills, to Keynes, Orwell, Trump and Brexit, the history is here, right up to events of 2020. It’s well researched and mostly easy to read1. Having heard the author on various podcasts, I might have expected more swearing.

How to be right

Sometimes I can’t help being a bit of a liberal caricature. James O’Brien is one too, and he knows it.

In his book “How to be right… in a world gone wrong” [affiliate link] he goes through a bunch of topics, from Islam to Political Correctness, and debunks the common arguments, often using transcripts from his radio show. The chapter on The Age Gap is, perhaps, the one that made me think the most.

The Establishment

The Establishment” [affiliate link] by Owen Jones is another Brexit-inspired read, though it was actually written before the referendum and some of it has dated remarkably quickly because of that.

It reads like a long Guardian article. Or, maybe, as a collection of Guardian columns strung together, in the sense that some turns of phrase seem to repeat often. If they’d not been in one book it might have been less noticeable? And the politics are similarly left-leaning.

Write to your MP about Brexit!

I’m sick of last years referendum on our membership of the EU being used to justify… pretty much anything. And any criticism is met with “you have to respect the will of the people.”

Well, I’m a person and I don’t think my will is being respected by many politicians and much of the media. The result of the referendum doesn’t say that people are happy with a so-called Hard Brexit, dismantling the NHS or using EU citizens as negotiation pawns.

Blocks, both technical and mental

Blocking content from the Internet is getting a lot of press of late. The last couple of weeks has seen the Pirate Bay being blocked by a number of large ISPs and debate over whether the blocking of “adult” content should be opt-in or opt-out.

Unfortunately the enthusiasm to “protect the children” and “protect the copyright holders” seems to have pushed aside much of the debate of whether we should be doing this at all or whether it’s practical.

Doesn’t add up

Today the Telegraph had an article claiming that “the top one per cent of British earners are now paying almost 30 per cent of all income tax.” It’s then painted as a bad, unexpected revelation. But I’m not sure that should be the case. In one of my mini-Ben Goldacre moments, I think it’s one of those areas where your intuition and the numbers don’t necessarily align.

This post isn’t about politics or fairness or even, really, taxes. Instead it’s about maths, because what the story fails to say is that you would absolutely expect a small number of high earners to foot most of the bill.

My delicious.com bookmarks for August 25th through September 1st

The weird world of the Daily Mail

Today the Daily Mail is complaining about a joke that was broadcast on the News Quiz in October last year. (Is it still considered news six months after the event?)

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend reading the article, so, to summarise:

  1. Broadcasting a joke that implies, but doesn’t use, a swear word is bad
  2. But printing the same joke in a newspaper is okay
  3. Broadcasting scantily clad women dancing is bad
  4. But printing pictures of the same is okay
  5. Putting quotes around a word to indicate disdain is good writing
  6. A single complaint represents The Silent Majority
  7. Mob rule would be a good thing
  8. Potentially causing offence is grounds for severe sanctions
  9. (But see bullets two and four for exceptions)
  10. Knee-jerk liberals — whatever they are — are a wide-spread problem
  11. Knee-jerk tabloids are okay
  12. Personal responsibility is good
  13. (Unless we have to exercise it ourselves)
  14. Your opinion is wrong
  15. Mine is right
  16. Banning stuff that we don’t like represents freedom
  17. Stating things as fact makes them true
  18. Black is white
  19. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia

I may have veered off target a little at the end but I think that’s pretty close to the core of the article. Did I miss anything?

My delicious.com bookmarks for March 9th through March 12th