Bookworm on Aug 02 2008 | Filed under: Barack Obama, Britain, Economics, England
When I was at Berkeley, I had only a few decent professors. One of them (who was really wonderful) taught a British history class covering the period from 1760 to WWII. He taught us that the Industrial Revolution, though it started in England, petered out. It lacked the ferocity and longevity that characterized the American [...]
Bookworm on Jul 15 2008 | Filed under: Britain, Crime and punishment, England
In a bizarre act of unexpected intelligence, the British government passed a law allowing Brits to defend themselves in their own homes (and on the streets) without fear of reprisal — not from the burglars within, but from the government forces without:
Home owners and “have-a go-heroes” have for the first time been given the legal [...]
Bookworm on Jul 15 2008 | Filed under: Britain, England
Britain’s famous Order of the Garter bears upon it the motto “Honi soit qui mal y pense” which is Old French for “shame upon him who thinks evil upon it.” The order came into being in the mid-14th Century, during the reign of Edward III. There are several stories about its origin, with the following [...]
Bookworm on Jul 01 2008 | Filed under: Barack Obama, Britain, England, Government, Medicine
I heard on Dennis Prager today a call from a British man who pointed out that, in the 10 years of Tony Blair’s socialism, every major institution in Britain declined. And the more the government meddled, the greater the decline. Today’s British papers offer yet another example: The dental portion of the National Health Service [...]
Bookworm on Jun 16 2008 | Filed under: Britain, Children, England
I have to admit that I never potty trained my children. Instead, I sent them to a Montessori preschool. By the time each was about 25 months old, he or she was completely potty trained. The Montessori approach simply integrates visits to the potty into the toddler curriculum. Since the teacher [...]
Bookworm on Jun 16 2008 | Filed under: Africa, Democrats, England, Europe, John McCain
J. R. Dunn has a wonderful antidote to political despair. I have some optimistic predictions of my own:
I think the current gas crisis, coupled with the holes being punctured into Global Warming, and China’s status as No. 1 C02 polluter, will create a popular ground swell that will force the Demos’ hands (1) on ANWR [...]
Bookworm on Jun 08 2008 | Filed under: Barack Obama, Britain, England, France, Health, Islam, John McCain, Medicine, Muslim violence
Britain’s Telegraph has three interesting articles, and the London Times one:
Read about the vast difference between Britain’s and France’s socialized medicine. I’d certainly like to know what accounts for the difference before I start making changes to the American system. Color me skeptical, but I bet Obama, who shows himself to be remarkably [...]
Bookworm on Jun 06 2008 | Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, England, Jihad
I can’t add anything to this that you haven’t already thought of yourselves:
A solicitor who specialises in representing terror suspects and tells them not to cooperate with police was paid almost £1 million in legal aid last year.
Muddassar Arani’s firm represented Abu Hamza, dirty bomb plotter Dhirin Barot and three of the 21/7 bombers in [...]
Bookworm on Jun 04 2008 | Filed under: African-Americans, Britain, England, Europe, Gay marriage, Uncategorized
(This is the first in what I hope will be a series of very civil essays examining marriage. Suek got me started with this idea based on a comment she wrote saying that, well, we need to figure out what marriage is all about. Planned future essays will involve separating the religious aspect of marriage [...]
Bookworm on Jun 02 2008 | Filed under: Barack Obama, Britain, England, Health, Hillary Clinton, Medicine
There’s talk of Obama giving Hillary the green light to socialize American medicine if she’ll walk away from the primaries. Melanie Phillips gives us a good example of why the renewed specter of socialized medicine should worry us:
To the Labour Party, the National Health Service is the talismanic proof of its own moral superiority.
Time and [...]
Bookworm on May 30 2008 | Filed under: Britain, England, Gay marriage
Gay marriage has a warm, fuzzy feeling. Those who support it ask, who can be hurt by granting to gay couples the same rights we give to straight couples? As you know, while I have no trouble with same sex relationships between consenting adults, and favor granting civil benefits to gay couples, I [...]
Bookworm on May 28 2008 | Filed under: Britain, Christians, England, Islam, Jews, Religion
It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything this sad. It comes from the Church of England’s own newspaper:
If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and therefore [...]
Bookworm on May 20 2008 | Filed under: Britain, England, Free speech
Americans do not have any idea how lucky they are to live in a land where freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution. More than that, they should resist every “soft” effort to make speech out of bounds on the grounds that it can hurt someone’s feelings. Absent this constant vigilance to [...]
Bookworm on May 19 2008 | Filed under: Britain, England
It’s a tragedy, but it’s also an interesting look at England today, since this is a story that could not possibly have happened at any time other than the first decade of the 21st Century:
Britain’s first Muslim peer, Lord Ahmed [a Muslim peer is an entirely new thing in England], is being investigated over a [...]
Bookworm on May 13 2008 | Filed under: Britain, Crime and punishment, England
Two stories from today’s British news:
I
Two young men pounced on a stranger on a London street, stabbed him, slit his throat, and ran off, leaving him to bleed to death on the street. That’s sad, but that’s not the news. This is the news:
Britain’s most senior judge, Lord Chief Justice Phillips, has advised [...]
Bookworm on May 09 2008 | Filed under: Britain, England
While the ordinary English resident freely ignores the fact that his every move is being monitored by CCTV, so that crime remains unaffected by the government’s watchful eye, police are hard at work treating as hardcore criminals people who drop apple cores — an unsavory, untidy act, perhaps, but not one that would seem to [...]
Bookworm on May 06 2008 | Filed under: Anti-Americanism, Anti-war, Britain, England, Europe
I am a huge Georgette Heyer fan. I consider her one of the most amusing, sophisticated novel writers ever, and think it’s a shame that she got labeled as a pure romance writer, a genre that puts her in the “I browse that section wearing sunglasses and a scarf” category of books at any [...]
Bookworm on May 06 2008 | Filed under: Britain, England
In Britain, it’s impossible to go anywhere without being spied upon. England has spend billions of pounds setting up the densest CCTV (close circuit TV) network in the world. Or perhaps I should say in the semi-free world, because I’d go odds that North Korea has a pretty good CCTV network too.
The goal [...]
Bookworm on Apr 26 2008 | Filed under: Britain, England, Jihad
WARNING: British bloggers — do not write about this story.
In England, a convoluted case played out in which the government froze funds in British banks that were to be sent to Al Qaeda, the funds’ owners challenged that action, and the court held against the government. As a result of this successful court [...]
Bookworm on Apr 24 2008 | Filed under: Britain, Crime and punishment, England
Please study the above photo very carefully. Doesn’t that look like a nice room? You can see that it’s fairly spacious and well fitted out, with nice colors, lots of light, and pretty curtains? I bet a lot of dorm students are looking at it enviously, as are a lot of kids who [...]
Bookworm on Apr 21 2008 | Filed under: Britain, England, Welfare
England is becoming an increasingly alien place in terms of modern values. Two articles from today’s Daily Mail (a useful repository for stories the other papers are embarrassed to print):
1. A man was charged as a criminal for over filling his garbage can.
2. Families that refuse even to look for work, finding [...]
Bookworm on Apr 15 2008 | Filed under: African-Americans, Britain, England, Welfare
Some months ago, the British papers were filled with the story of Shannon Matthews, a little girl who vanished from her home in West Yorkshire, sparking a huge manhunt. She was eventually found, 24 days later, at the home of her stepfather’s uncle. The big shocker, though, was the fact that both her [...]
Bookworm on Apr 11 2008 | Filed under: Bureaucracy, England
My mother-in-law’s parents died in Auschwitz. She wasn’t around for that horror because her parents, in a tremendous (and prescient) sacrifice, boarded her onto the Kindertransport, which took young children out of Nazi countries. As with my mother-in-law, most of these children never saw their parents again. Because the fact that she had to flee [...]
Bookworm on Apr 01 2008 | Filed under: Britain, Education, England, GBLT, Political correctness
In the world of presidential elections, we’re watching the fascinating spectacle of clashing identity politics. Neither Hillary nor Obama has a strong resume (or even a medium resume). Each is distinguished from the other, and from others in the field (remember Silky Pony?) solely because of gender or race. He’s black (sort of); she’s female [...]
Bookworm on Mar 31 2008 | Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Arabs, Britain, England, Islam, Israel, Nazis, Palestinians
The accepted wisdom is that the intense hatred the Palestinians feel for Jews is a direct result of Jewish annexation of the West Bank and Gaza after the 1967 War. Of course, as with most propaganda, this is false. Aside from conveniently ignoring the 1956 and 1948 Wars, not to mention the Koran [...]
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