Jake Mogg may not be the subtlest of all the beasts in the field, but like the serpent in the garden (to use Dante's description) egli e bugiardo e padre di menzogne – he is a liar and the father of lies. The Brexit crew have a passion for 'Research Groups', for which I believe … Continue reading President Brexit’s last stand – a new version of an old lie
Category: MUSINGS ON . . .
occasional effusions on every subject under the sun
To whom it may concern: the conduct of Cressida Dick with regard to the Sue Gray Report
From one perspective, I can see it is reasonable that 'In order to make a police complaint, you must be eligible to be a complainant. This is defined by the legislation as someone who has directly witnessed the incident or who is directly affected by it. Complaints can be raised by other people on their … Continue reading To whom it may concern: the conduct of Cressida Dick with regard to the Sue Gray Report
Α or Ω ? Reflections on ‘A Vignette’ – M R James’s last masterpiece
'Feeding the Cockerels' by Myles Birket Foster A Vignette is generally described as 'the last ghost story MR James ever wrote' – not unreasonably, since it was published posthumously in the year of his death, 1936, in the November edition of The London Mercury (at that time, a major monthly literary journal), James having died … Continue reading Α or Ω ? Reflections on ‘A Vignette’ – M R James’s last masterpiece
Lying with impunity
I have today had a letter from the office of that egregious ass, Jake Mogg, known principally for lying in the House of Commons, as shown above, though he has lied elsewhere, too [see Mogg the Mendacious, Mogg Mendax]. The letter (which is quite as underwhelming as you would expect) was in belated response to … Continue reading Lying with impunity
The Beat-Boxer and the Steam Machine: a paradigm of primitive speech
Let us suppose a beat-boxer, one of those gifted with the skill to reproduce a whole orchestra of percussive instruments using only his voice, and let us have him put in charge of a large and complicated steam-driven machine of the sort which has something fed in at one end, processes it, and puts the … Continue reading The Beat-Boxer and the Steam Machine: a paradigm of primitive speech
Ringing in the New Year
My recent passion for bakelite telephones, recounted here, has led to a new and unusual doorbell, though the route was somewhat circuitous. I developed a personal dislike of wireless doorbells in our last house, an upper maisonette flat, where answering the door involved descending one and sometimes two sets of stairs. Soon after we moved … Continue reading Ringing in the New Year
‘Strange fits of passion have I known’
...but none stranger than my recently-conceived passion for bakelite telephones. Three months ago, I knew nothing about them, beyond faint memories of the telephone in the first house I properly remember: its number was Perth 284 (the code for Perth was OPE8, as I recall, which later became 0738). Now I have these: Both work, … Continue reading ‘Strange fits of passion have I known’
The question that Johnson must answer about Cummings
Either Dominic Cummings’s action in driving to Durham from London had some justification that excused it or it had not. That it requires excuse is unarguable, since the guidelines state clearly that infected households must isolate at once and that even healthy people should leave the house only for a narrow range of reasons and … Continue reading The question that Johnson must answer about Cummings
The Magic Money Tree: is Covid-19 a game-changer?
The idea of 'convention' and its associated activity of 'deeming' are fundamental to human activity, as I think I have said elsewhere. By 'convention' I mean the agreement to be bound by something, to deem it to have a power which in reality resides with us. The paradigm of this concept is when a child, … Continue reading The Magic Money Tree: is Covid-19 a game-changer?
Only the Conservative party can save us now
A catchpenny headline, I grant you, but I hope to persuade you of the truth of it. By any measure, yesterday in parliament was an extraordinary spectacle. Here we had the least successful prime minister of all time, whose government has not won a single vote since he came to office, who has lost his … Continue reading Only the Conservative party can save us now
COMPLEAT TROWZER 