Many people don’t realise that going to war (or other, ancillary military activities) in Australia doesn’t require legislative approval; the executive — that is, the Prime Minister and Cabinet — can make the decision without involving all our elected representatives. This is relatively common around the world, although it is also common to find countries [...]
see more dog and puppy pictures A quick apology from DEM and me for failing to appear on the blog this weekend, when it was rather busy and a wee bit fractious. DEM has been laid low with the most impressive case of food poisoning I’ve seen in a while, and since I’m in Edinburgh [...]
Just thought a reminder was in order. I found this cartoon while tooling around the intertubes, and it describes my politics more succinctly than I’ve ever managed to.
Until I came to do the research for my MPhil, I didn’t realise that Prohibition — that great failed exercise in mass planning — was also known back in the day as ‘the noble experiment’. I learnt of the alternative moniker through Daniel Okrent’s superb history — Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. [...]
Posted in Drugs, Feminism, Free Speech, Internet, Law, Marriage, Personal liberty
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Tagged akmal saleh, al capone, clive hamilton, coverture marriage, daniel okrent, EFA, helen razer, internet filter, iorarua, joseph raz, Ku Klux Klan, milton friedman, no clean feed, Prohibition, proudhon, stephen conroy, susan b anthony, timetotellmum, wordsworth donisthorpe
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I’ve deliberately avoided discussion of the Gaza Flotilla issue, largely because it’s one of our ‘hot-button-issues-that-attracts-insane-loonies’ (along with AGW and abortion), but this deeply cynical but extremely well informed analysis from STRATFOR is simply too good to pass up. Money quote? This: Israel is now in uncharted waters. It does not know how to respond. It [...]
Very often, well-known actors, sportspeople and artists are asked to opine on things well outside their ken. I’ve had it done to me in the past. I hope, for the most part, that I had the wit and wisdom to say, ‘well, I don’t know’, but sometimes, I didn’t. Okay, lawyers are opinionated bastards — [...]
My friend Jack has a kitler. That is, a cat that looks like Hitler. Such things are not the product of some internet fantasy or determined skill in photoshop. I pulled up in his driveway a few years ago to see the thing sitting on his verandah, licking its paws, toothbrush moustache well in evidence. ‘Does [...]
‘Why,’ asked a Labour friend of mine this week, ‘is Britain still run by people from Oxford and Cambridge? When is it going to stop?’ Her despair was as much about her own party as mine, as well as pretty much every other political grouping in the United Kingdom. David Cameron, check. Nick Clegg, check. Tony [...]
Most ‘funny’ groups on Facebook are not, ahem, funny, but the ‘Petition to let David Dimbleby go to bed‘ group is funny. As the group admins explain: As many of you know, poor David has been up for more than 14 hours as a result of the hung parliament. During this time he has become [...]
In news that must have reached Australia by now, the General Election has resulted in a hung parliament. It was also utterly shambolic: if you wanted further evidence that Britain is becoming a third world country, there were vast queues at polling stations, doors were shut in voters’ faces and many booths ran out of [...]
