Category Archives: Politics

The CIA’s 2024 Annual Threat Assessment: Intelligence Community Assessment

The CIA isn’t interested in the rights and wrongs of international conflicts. Their focus is their impact on the USA. The Gaza Conflict is interesting in this respect. It is facile to think it is tightly located there. “Conflicts, particularly … Continue reading

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An Albert Einstein quip

I don’t know about World War III, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

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The Nanny State and Climate Change

We are also taking every opportunity to encourage low-tax member states to increase their tobacco taxes on health grounds. For example, during the United Kingdom presidency of the Community we held a seminar in London for health and tax officials which produced useful conclusions on … Continue reading

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Germany’s New Army, 1955

In the first two years, the Bundeswehr accepted 125,000 veteran soldiers and 37,000 officers. Thirty-one of its thirty-eight generals had served on Hitlers general staff. Eighty per cent of all commanding officers in 1961 had been decorated with the Iron … Continue reading

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Another delicacy disappears

The South Korean parliament on Tuesday passed a law to ban trade of dog meat by 2027. There were 208 votes in favor and two abstentions for the bill, which bans the breeding, butchering, distributing and selling of dogs for … Continue reading

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Disadvantaged Students and Educational Innovation

“…in 2014, only 36.5 per cent of disadvantaged pupils achieved 5 A*-C including English and maths GCSEs, compared with 64.0 per cent of other pupils.”1 Bright Futures Educational Trust2 controls South Shore Academy, Blackpool. Achieving 5 Grade ‘A*-Cs’ is remote … Continue reading

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Ricky Gervais on Gay Marriage

“Same sex marriage is not a gay privilege, it’s equal rights. Privilege would be something like gay people not paying taxes. Like churches don’t.”

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School Uniform: Time for a Re-think

Causation means that a change in one variable causes a change in another variable. Correlation means there is a statistical association between variables.1 In Britain school uniform is a quasi-religion. Not wearing it can be punished by exclusion from school. Why? What’s … Continue reading

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Selected Quotes from the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill 12th December 2023

James Cleverly (minister) I am confident, and indeed the conversations I have had with the Government’s legal advisers reinforce my belief, that the actions we are taking, while novel and very much pushing at the edge of the envelope, are … Continue reading

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COP28: And Greta said what?

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