Daniel Davies speaks on Afghanistan, and comments ensue. Dan Hardie is mostly making sense; he argues that there are essentially three options – a strategy of trying to win the tribes, one of defending the cities and key locations and pouring in aid to the Afghans, or one of unilateral withdrawal. The first would be…
Read More arguing about AfghanistanI’m surprised more people didn’t pick this up, but the Guardian quietly confirmed all the rumours about cash points and BACS payments nearly not making it through the banking crisis. Here’s the story: The Guardian has learnt that a year ago the City regulator was so concerned about customers’ fears over the soundness of RBS…
Read More sorry funds are not available, we’ve got you by the ballssorry funds are not available, we’ve got you by the ballsMore fake consensus. “It’s like a three ring circus in here!” Here’s Chris Dillow, making the excellent point that the promises of cuts are significantly less than the average errors on forecasts of the budget balance. Here’s Samuel Brittan making the excellent point that the cure for the budget deficit is economic recovery. Here’s Economic…
Read More false consensus, part twoYou think the attack on libertarians was troll bait? Well, this thing goes up to 11. Douglas Hogg is right, possibly for the first time in his career. Consider the great kerfuffle about MPs’ expenses. Some of them were in the habit of doing things that were within the rules but looked embarrassingly extravagant, some…
Read More Hogging the chamberBoris Johnson is opposed to more congestion charging, but not quite yet; however, he is also keen on “road pricing”. I can see a couple of explanations for this. One is that there’s no “there” there – he’s an unstable personality without intellectual substance and with a practised TV clown act, like George W. Bush,…
Read More fake sheikhsLibertarianism, by which I mean yer bog standard comments thread North American subtype, is irrational. This struck me in the context of this post of Charlie Whitaker’s, which was of course criticised by the local libertarian in the usual terms. First of all, let’s define terms; the standard set-up of modern right-libertarian arguments is based…
Read More that’s not noise, that’s the sound of freedom – oh, by the way, I voted Libertarian