12% of 16- to 24-year-old Brits think honey is produced by farmers squeezing bees. A fifth think fish fingers are made from the fingers of fish. 15% don’t know that lamb comes from sheep. 9% think potatoes grow on trees. (Rowse/Daily Mirror) And now 52% of their elders want to leave the EU. Good …
Continue reading ‘Feeling you have less and less in common with some others?’ »
Where can terrorists buy guns? Why, the United States! Federal law prohibits felons, fugitives, drug addicts and domestic abusers from purchasing firearms, but it excludes anyone on an FBI watchlist. From 2004 to 2014 suspected terrorists tried to buy guns 2,233 times, according to the Washington Post, and 91% of the time they succeeded. Apparently, …
Continue reading ‘Terrorism and the complicity of the gun advocates’ »
To The Guardian If Edward Said “could find no objections to colonialism and imperialism in English literature”, he was quite wrong. Samuel Johnson (1709-84) was a fierce critic of colonial wars. In his Life of Mr Richard Savage, he attacked “the enormous wickedness of making war upon barbarous natives, because they cannot resist, and of …
“If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things”. (Novelist Norman Douglas, quoted on Forbes.com) Bon mot. Some children are showered with gifts of all kinds, and, by the way, are seldom made to even text a “thank you”, let alone write a letter. I have noticed that the …
Americans mythologise Thanksgiving. Many know they are doing so; even more do not. The Pilgrims didn’t call themselves Pilgrims for starters. The were overwhelmingly not Puritan and they were not really persecuted at all, just annoyed at the Church of England and its bishops. They did leave England for religious reasons, but left Holland of …
