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Monthly Archives: July 2014
The Billionaires’ Club
This breaking story sounds familiar: Over the past fifty years, America’s environmental movement has grown from college kids adorning flowers to a billion dollar industry. With huge budgets to employ lobbyists, lawyers, and public relations professionals, many of America’s leading … Continue reading
All So Blatant
Two remarks I read today. First: Sir Peter Westmacott, the British Ambassador to Washington, broke new diplomatic ground in his interview with MSNBC TV on 28 July. Asked directly to eschew diplomatic language and give three words describing Russia’s President … Continue reading
Ball And Chain
What are smoking bans supposed to achieve? I think they’re supposed to ‘help’ people quit smoking. Actually, I don’t think it’s about ‘helping’ people quit smoking: it’s about making them quit smoking. They make people quit smoking, by disallowing smoking … Continue reading
Plain Packaging Challenged
I’ve always been a bit puzzled how governments can erase product brands, and replace them with its own messages. Other people think the same: In a note to investors in tobacco stocks Exane BNP Paribas said it had taken legal … Continue reading
The Calm Before The Storm
AEP in the Telegraph: There must be an extremely high risk that the Kremlin will defy Western sanctions and launch “asymmetric retaliation” on the ground, overthrowing the post-Cold War settlement altogether. Markets seem strangely insouciant as the geopolitical order of … Continue reading
The Party’s Over
I’ve never been on a cruise ship. But to the best of my knowledge life on one of them is more or less one non-stop party, from dawn to dusk. But it seems that now the party’s over. Cruise Lines to … Continue reading
Madness
That’s what this seems like to me. Proposed EU sanctions threaten to shut Russia out of the world financial system. They just seem to want to dominate and humiliate and provoke Russia. Do they want to start a war or … Continue reading
The Expansionist European Union
I don’t usually agree with Peter Hitchens, but I did with this piece in the Mail: One thing we should have learned in the past 100 years is that war is hell. We might also have noticed that, once begun, … Continue reading
Never Really Dead
I agree with Brendan O’Neill. Calling it the “nanny state” implies that it’s essentially caring and well-meaning, in ways that nannies are supposed to be. “Bully state” is nearer the mark, because bullies aren’t in the least bit caring or well-meaning. … Continue reading
The Antismoking Epidemic
Antismokers often speak of smoking as an “epidemic”. But it seems to me that if we have an epidemic at all, it’s an epidemic of antismoking. I’ve drawn up an outline graph (right) showing estimated UK smoking and antismoking prevalence … Continue reading
Frank Davis 