The Joy of Curmudgeonry

If, as some persons maintain, there is an infinity of universes, in the totality of which every possibility is an actuality, then we ought t...

“[W]hy is the gap between high and low pay so wide and why do we value essential work so poorly?” [1] asks the highly paid and unessential...

Insane optimism leads us blindly into those problems for which it then might present itself as the solution. It is in the mess and decrepitu...

If it were shown that the most effective and just solution to a pressing modern problem were an old-fashioned and “outmoded” idea, then one ...

In the great moral-political struggle against gross and offensive generalisations, it should become a matter of consistent principle to insi...

On Radio Four’s PM programme last night (19th January 2006), Estelle Morris declared that “the independence of a school can make it impossi...

The wrongness of many an idea is easily shown, and can be summed up in a sentence or two, which is why its adherents might point to the many...

In the democratically numbed mind, it is enough that it is known that most people want to see a policy enforced for it to be considered righ...

When one learns that it is a man’s intention to emphasise “the potential of facial hair both to uphold and more interestingly to subvert pat...

A little hysteria can go ill-favoured in effete and radical circles – what may be required is a great deal of hysteria, lest one be thought ...

Let it fall to your credit that it has never occurred to you to say that the banks of a stream lie across from one another because of the ex...

If you come across a person who claims that all is political, then you know what to think when he claims that his acts are moral.

The great Jacob Burckhardt said that the world was suffused with false scepticism, and that of the true kind there could never be enough. Th...

If Anthony Browne, who has recently had published his tract on the ravages of political correctness, is looking for a pithy exposition of th...

When Julia Kristeva proclaims that “revolt is our mysticism” [1] , we may assume she speaks on behalf of her fellow soixante-huitards attard...

If it is only power that our politicians find persuasive, then, though it would be a shame to do so, we should have to consider that the cou...