Crooked Timber (Free subscription) | 11/05/2008 | UK
By Kathy G. I’ve been remiss in replying to this post by Megan McArdle, but today I’ve finally gotten around to it. This will be a really long post, so don't say I didn't warn ya. McArdle basically argues two things: that 1) the minimum wage has a disemployment effect, and 2) that monopsony is not a [...]
The Lone Voice (Free subscription) | 10/05/2008 | UK
No seriously I do know where this twat lives. The Telegraph shows how New Labour scum and the justices they appoint are soft on criminals and soft on the causes of criminals. "A judge has told a teenager who carried out an unprovoked attack on a married couple that he was "the personification of yob Britain." Joel Herd, 18, assaulted the couple while they were walking home from a village restaurant....
USS Neverdock (Free subscription) | 09/05/2008 | UK
and more Muslim terrorists are to be freed. "The earlier judgment on Abu Qatada’s deportation wrecked the policy of drawing up “memoranda of understanding” for the return of suspects to Middle East countries with poor human rights records. Further embarrassments are likely to follow. The Times understands that the head of an Algerian terrorist network that allegedly plotted bomb attacks in Europe and...
Everything Ulster (Free subscription) | 09/05/2008 | UK
They're coming from all sides today. O'Neill's ever-watchful eye has picked up that Wales's GVA per head is only 77% of the UK average , (down from 79% when the Assembly was set up in 1999 and 84% back in 1991) despite receiving more than £1bn of EU aid to boost economic activity, placing them firmly at the bottom of the UK league table. Never mind, as long as the Bank of England, the Olympic Delivery...
David Thompson (Free subscription) | 08/05/2008 | UK
Speaking of Sam Harris, in this clip he touches on a blind spot shared by many commentators, especially on the left. Here’s the money quote: I think liberals, almost by definition, don't know what it's like to really believe in...
Ross Douthat (Free subscription) | 07/05/2008 | UK
Hmmm - this doesn't seem quite like the book I remember: That said, as far as Waugh's more serious novels go, my loyalties lie with the Sword of Honour trilogy, so the prospect of seeing a tarted-up Brideshead doesn't really faze me. Indeed, a somewhat trashy adaptation might be exactly the right approach to a book that Waugh himself allowed to be overripe, overnostalgic and overwritten.
Londonist (Free subscription) | 07/05/2008 | UK
The five leading designs for an Angel of the South have been revealed. The winner will be built in Ebbsfleet, Kent in 2010, as the South's answer to Antony Gormley's Angel of the North. Top left: Turner Prize winner Richard Deacon offers a skeletal tower of polyhedra. Predicted tabloid nickname: the wilting pylon. Top right: a giant horse, echoing the ancient tradition of chalk horses in Kent, by...
Tangled Blog (Free subscription) | 08/05/2008 | UK
In what one way, you could look upon this as good news. Church attendance in Britain is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation, research published today suggests. The fall - from the four million people who attend church at least once a month today - means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other denominations...
Londonist (Free subscription) | 07/05/2008 | UK
Here at Londonist, we haven't been shy about our support for cycling . Getting exercise while avoiding the congestion charge or mass transit is definitely positive. But there are some who need to take mass transit in order to get into London – or have an impossibly long journey and need to take the Tube part of the way – and cycle from that point on. We salute these efforts, but not everyone is so...
David Thompson (Free subscription) | 06/05/2008 | UK
Sam Harris chances his arm at the Huffington Post – not an obvious venue for realistic debate - and comments on a “psychopathic skewing of priorities.” Specifically, the tensions between free enquiry and deference to traditional Islam: The point is...
Random Thoughts from Reno (Free subscription) | 03/05/2008 | UK
A French woman who suffered from abuse from her adoptive father and bore six children from him wants to meet Elisabeth Fritzl . In her case, it went on for 28 years before this creep died in 1999. Her stepmother knew the abuse happened and she was convicted in connection with the case for her inaction. I doubt any meeting between the two women is going to happen anytime in the near future.
Londonist (Free subscription) | 06/05/2008 | UK
Reassured by the omnipresent CCTV cameras that train their Cyclops vision on London's populace as they go about their business? Neither are we, particularly now that a senior police officer has claimed they don't cut crime Back in January we reported that London now boasts some 10,000 cameras, and Britain as a whole ranks first in the EU for "endemic surveillance". Yet Detective Chief Inspector Mike...
Londonist (Free subscription) | 06/05/2008 | UK
Pete Doherty is a free man and roaming the streets once again. The Babyshambles singer was released from jail today , just 29 days into his 14-week sentence. Doherty showed the media his certificate proving he passed his drug test as he left Wormwood Scrubs. It's all very well and good that Pete’s proven he’s clean, but considering he was jailed for missing appoints with his probation officer, is...
PJH Law - Employment Law Blog (Free subscription) | 06/05/2008 | UK
The BBC has revealed stats to show that 137 employers were caught in March and April this year for employing illegal immigrants. This is double the figure caught in 2007 and double the number of prosecutions than over the past decade. In the past two months over £500,000 has been handed out in fines. You can read [...]
Slugger O'Toole (Free subscription) | 05/05/2008 | UK
The Irish Times today predicts [subs req] that the Republic of Ireland's Environment Minister, John Gormley, is expected to make an order putting the Woodstown archaeological site in Co Waterford, unearthed in 2003, on the Record of Monuments and Places under the National Monuments Acts as recommended by the Woodstown working group’s final report on “one of the most important early Viking Age trading...
