Class justice

Upper-class judges in London safeguarding access to their new, cheap servant class and to their Tuscan holiday homes and in Madrid trying to frustrate publication of information about footballers’ tax evasion: surely the new right and the old left can forget their differences on this one. Ahem.

Angelo Saxon

Someone taking Pope Greg (non angli sed angeli) seriously? Nope, just the fashionable new spelling,

Why doesn’t Radio 4 have a Friday Worship slot for Muslims?

Marvelling at the Norman apologist just after 18:00 on Sunday Worship, and wondering why we have no comparable access, with simultaneous translation, to for example the sermons of the imam of the Dar-ul-Uloom Qadria mosque in Walthamstow, whose adherents have been handing out booklets apparently endorsed by him calling for the murder of those, like…

Why aren’t the Andalusians building the Middle East’s new walls?

Scott has made a handy list of Trumpian walls being built across the still-smouldering Ottoman Empire, and a quick check reveals that none of them appear to be being built by Spanish contractors. Now, around Spain local governments are renovating, but more usually simply new-building medieval (Moorish) walls for the tourist trade (in monstrous contravention,…

Simon Heffer on Richard Evans Pursuit of Power: oh dear

Simon Heffer on Richard J. Evans, The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815-1914 (Penguin History of Europe), to paraphrase him, falls well below [the Speccie’s] normal standards of copy-editing: And there are factual errors which in their range also help illustrate the scope of the book: there was no such person as Lord George Macartney; Gorz…

Viktor Orbán 0, Shakespeare 1

Mr Fido, who compensates for a distinct lack of charm with cunning a-plenty, has a piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine. Called “Are you against peace?”, the customary response to awkward questions of Communist officialdom during the Soviet era and of EU officialdom now, he says that we should be worrying rather less about the future…

One more liberal cosmopolitan for Brexit

I agree with Jeremy and TSE that the problem’s not going to go away either way. But, apart from the anti-democratic nature of the project, I’m voting out because, while the EU has lowered costs and raised revenues for the Guardian-reading, property-owning classes (I’m particularly thinking of free movement of people in the form of…

The curiousness of Colin

I mean, why’s he always walking back to a place NEAR where he lives? It’s like being the serial seducer of someone you don’t really fancy. He’s right about the Dutch, though. Absolute barstards – just look how they kill pigeons: Duif vast met kop tussen brug en wegdek; duif is niet dood. https://t.co/t2KHPBmcU7 pic.twitter.com/sN7tduMdfH…

Saxon revolt?

Many old-style hardware shops in London have a reputation for poor customer service (an example). I wonder if they have struggled because the DIY-ers had no idea what they were looking for, and because the Slav professionals who have replaced them since 2004 have no idea what it is called. But they are usually fine…