Tag: Post-Fact
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A Message to You, Rudy
That is one freefall from grace. No, not Trump’s impending evisceration at the hands of every gagging investigator on the planet, but Rudy Giuliani’s personal chute-less nosedive. After 9/11 this was the guy America embraced, and deservedly so for his leadership. Then he hitched his cart to the Trump horse, and the rest as they…
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Fact Up
It’s the one most striking paradox about 21st century democracy. The moment a politician starts to lose their grip on power, they lose their grip full-stop. Invariably, this heralds a bullish attempt to unpick the legitimacy of those who had exercised their democratic choice Of course, the very same rogues had employed fakery and charlatanic…
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Leaving Party 🎉
The golden rule for the cognoscenti when you leave a job is to walk out and don’t look back. Any glance in the rea-view mirror offers you only a glimpse of second-raters picking bits off your professional reputation for their own ends. It’s a harsh blow to be basking in your own irrelevance, which is…
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Clowning Glory
Looking at the free school meals row, you might feel that this is a classic confrontation between a government and an opposition with diametrically opposed positions on social welfare. It isn’t. It’s actually an artificial squabble for political ground that distracts from a much more damaging affliction: local government incompetence. If local government agencies had…
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Tiers for Fears
Who are the most relieved people in the UK right now? No, apart from the Russian currency speculators? Retired epidemiologists. Like many other academics, epidemiologists have merrily nurtured careers and pontificated on their theoretical expertise, their forecasts, and their models, and then it all came crashing down. They became relevant as reality kicked in. Worse…
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Dread Locked
So, batshit albino-bear Johnson gave his conference speech, which was less of a serious manifesto and more that of an acid-dropping ‘Generation Game’ contestant with a limited time to recall as much as possible on the political conveyor belt before the breathing walls closed in around him. And ‘Didn’t he do well?’ Well, no. The…
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Bitter Ex
I made a trip to the opticians recently, which considering the now mandatory COVID re-engineering of processes went essentially smoothly. Professional and organised staff, hassle-free, and frames that nestled peacefully on my asymmetric features. To top it off, I saved a hefty chunk on my last similar purchase. A fat, juicy tick in the customer…
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Collars and Cuffs
Tragic news from Croydon where a Police Custody Sergeant has been shot dead in a secure custody suite. Nothing can detract from the awful reality that a man has lost his life. Most telling, though, is the gamut of reactions on social media. Pro-police commentators have trumpeted that the Sergeant was ‘murdered’. Others are beyond…
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Any Scheme Will Do
I’ve always been sceptical about COVID mask diktats because adherence to face coverings has inexplicably landed squarely in absolutist territory. Veiled criticism doesn’t feature when it comes to masks (chortle). Donning a vizard of whatever type is good. Not wearing a mask of any type is bad. And that wasn’t the case a few months…
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Top of the Populists
This week’s edition of Top of the Populists comes directly from Downing Street as Boris looks straight into the camera while surreptitiously abusing members of the audience. Blondie and the gang are rapidly closing the gap on Jimmy Savile’s scumometer needle reading, but surely not even Jim could have fixed this clusterfuck. Even keen Brexiters…
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