Polly Toynbee is waging her war against local democracy once again, insisting that only centralised super-states can be socially progressive and blithely ignoring the fact that all the Scandinavian countries she worships so much are far more decentralised that we can even dream. This week, she has come up with the bizarre hypothesis that ‘localism’… Continue reading Polly Toynbee – where do I start?
Tag: commentariat
Crying Wolf about Fascism
I was deeply impressed with an article I read earlier this week in the Guardian magazine section by Naomi Wolf. I was impressed because while individually I think she had managed to point to a lot of worrying trends in terms of US policy, it actually left me less convinced that the US was on… Continue reading Crying Wolf about Fascism
Smugged
A loathsome backhanded compliment in the Brendan O’Neill’s editorial in this week’s Spiked email newsletter: Bloggers made the news this week instead of simply leaching off it. There’s talk of a ‘code of conduct’, ‘warning signs’ if blogs contain crude content. But blogs aren’t the place to go if you want erudite debate; they’re the… Continue reading Smugged