Alton Towers, a family fun and amusement park in Great Britain, recently had to cancel a “Muslim fun day” because there wasn’t enough interest in it. The event was organised by Islamic Leisure who had billed the event as the “First National Muslim Fun Day.,” expecting 28,ooo to sign up ...
Read MoreAddicted to Irresponsibility
Two days ago a judge had a rattle at internet betting sites in the course of the trial and sentencing of Bryan Benjafield who stole in excess of £1 million from his employer over 18 months, squandering the lot on internet gambling websites. Judge Andrew Langdon announced his disbelief at ...
Read MoreThe Fox and the Hounds
There they hide in the long grass. Waiting for their prey. Always ready to move. Telescopic lens at the ready. Their prey comes into sight. Closer and closer they skulk until within range. Out they spring, without warning, and begin to shoot. The prey stands no chance. The scenario above ...
Read MoreAnd He Made Junk Food
Long-term readers of this blog may know of my fondness for something which has come to be known as ‘junk’ food. There are two reasons for this: (a) that I don’t believe it’s junk at all, and (b) that I love to piss off the politically correct. When I moved ...
Read MoreProud to be Pink
It’s gay pride week here in Northern Ireland, an event which will culminate in the Gay Pride parade due to take place next Saturday in Belfast. For almost 15 years now the homosexual community has been coming out to tell us all how proud they are to be gay. This ...
Read MoreObservations on the Bush-Blair Open Mic Incident
By now you will have seen video from the camera and heard sound from the microphone that inadvertently eavesdropped on the US President and UK Prime Minister at the G8 summit this week. I have a few observations, such as that we’ve learned a few interesting things about the President ...
Read MoreQuote of the day
“Guns kill people in the same way that spoons made Michael Moore fat.” -Anon
Read MoreThe Henley Question & a response to Aitkenhead on selfishness
I was in the middle of writing an article about something else when this ripsnorter landed in my news stack: the Henley Centre has published the results of its annual single-question survey regarding individualism, and the results are SWEET! I put my unfinished post through the shredder and started to ...
Read MoreFlorida: Motorcycle helmet law
Many times this blog has called for individual responsibility to be the guiding principal of lawmaking. It is individual responsibility (and the sovereignty of the individual) that sets libertarianism apart from other ideologies. A simple example of this principal in a political argument: 1) If one chooses to ride a ...
Read More"An Inconvenient Truth"
I’ve avoided mentioning Al Gore’s climate change movie ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ until now. My excuse is that I haven’t seen it, and although I know Gore’s version of events well enough to privately predict that it is witless hogwash, in the interests of reason I like to give the benefit ...
Read MoreMy position on climate change
I’ve had several comments to the effect that my position on climate change policy ignores information from climatologists; that it is ignorant of scientific observations. In case my previous posts on the matter (for example this) haven’t been clear enough, let me state my actual position so that the discussion ...
Read MoreGay marriage amendment fails: the real solution
The Constitutional amendment which would have banned gay marriage was defeated in the United States Senate today, despite President Bush’s public calls in favour of it. Bush said that the institution of marriage needs taken out of the hands of ‘activist judges’ and put back into the hands of the ...
Read MoreUPDATE: Operation Divine Strake
Earlier this month, environmentalist groups on behalf of the Winnemucca Indian Colony succeeded in having Divine Strake postponed until at least June 23rd by filing a lawsuit against the Pentagon (see my original article on Operation Divine Strake here). And USA Today reports: “A number of small, rural protests have ...
Read MoreSunday Sequence on climate change
“Early morning, and the city comes alive. And what is immediately clear is the parameters of a global war between nature and the car. By a little after sunrise, it is clear that it is the car that is winning.†So says the BBC’s Malachi O’Doherty in a report for ...
Read MoreLetter to Mark Tran, The Guardian
Dear Mr Tran, Thank you for your article on Bush’s nomination of Michael Hayden for CIA Chief. It struck a chord. In your profile, it says that your interests include “US politics, environmental policy and corporate social responsibility”. Remarkable! I’d never have expected the Guardian to employ a journalist with ...
Read MoreThe Great Annual Mayday Post
On John Prescott’s affair:Blair has the right idea here, in allowing Prescott to keep his job. What “Randy Old Sod†does with his pecker is entirely up to him. There are those who believe that people in government should be held to a higher standard in such matters. But that ...
Read MoreWhy everyone should see ‘United 93’
The purpose of a movie is to tell a story. In the case of United 93, written and directed by Paul Greengrass and to be released tomorrow, its story is one that the whole world lived on September 11th, 2001. The most blatant terrorist attack in recent history, it was ...
Read MorePrison Works
Edward Garnier, the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, recently expressed his view that imprisoning criminals “is hugely expensive and not working.†Hugely expensive is not the same as too expensive, but Mr Garnier reckons the £37,000 per prisoner per year is too much to pay. Unfortunately citing a statistic does ...
Read MoreCapitalists Do It Better
Three unconnected stories in the Times newspaper recently illustrated perfectly what is wrong with modern charity. I present these cases as a sort of 3-in-1 blog. (1) Gordon Hood What is the purpose of government? To my libertarian mind the function of government is, put crudely, to protect the fundamental ...
Read MoreOperation Divine Strake
My backyard faces out to the massive desert landscape of the American SouthWest (controlled by the Federal Bureau of Land Management). You could leave through my gate into the desert and start walking, and not find ANYTHING but desert for a few hundred miles. What a great place to blow ...
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