I am posting this from a hotel (with wifi) apparently scientifically situated in the middle of nowhere, somewhere near Marseille. This is thanks to SNCF voyages who, while good at booking rail tickets, are apparently absolutely incapable of understanding the concept of a hotel being close to their own railway station, as opposed to a €30 taxi ride away from it.
Blog
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Tories vs. Human Rights
Another stall-setting rant by David Davies confirms his credentials at righter than right.
Most of it is Tory-paranoia boilerplate, but it repeats surely the most stupid of all Tory policies, the repeal of the Human Rights Act. Apart from the obvious implication – in the headline of this post – it also is supremely pointless. Unless the Tories also want to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, the Convention will still bind Britain, it will just be harder for people to exercise their rights, because they’ll need to go to the European court every time. The Tories – they don’t mind you having rights, they just don’t want you to exercise them (unless you’re rich enough to afford expensive lawyers).
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Travel notes: Paris
A pleasant stay in Paris at the Hotel Patio St. Antoine, on the rue Faubourg St Antoine, metro Faidherbe-Chaligny. Also, right by the metro, a lovely friendly cafe callled Le cafe Faidherbe.
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Tricky question
The unanswerable questions posed tothe Urban Legends Reference Pages. via MeFi.
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Interview with a British Jihadist | MetaFilter
Prospect interviews a Jihadist from Manchester, and Metafilter discusses.
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Ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ludicrous self-publicist Robert Kilroy-Silk has quit the party he founded, Veritas.
Apparently, the ideas he espoused, such as immediate withdrawal from the European Union, abolishing inheritance tax on houses and expelling all asylum seekers (except those with children) are “now part of the political mainstream”. I can’t say I’d noticed, to be honest, but perhaps that’s what all washed up has-been xenophobes like to think.
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We are what we are
Tristram Hunt (author of the excellent Building Jerusalem) invokes Orwell in an excellent article in the New Statesman, on the nature of Britishness.
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The Rap Canterbury Tales
An amazing Rap version of some of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. via BBC News.