You might recall the article calculating the exact amount of banter in the photo of the Eton boys who met Putin. You do? Good. Well, here is a similar and in some ways even more insightful article calculating the exact amount of banter in the photo of the Independent Group MPs at Nandos. This part gives you some idea of quite important this article is:
"There is a lot to process here, but most importantly I see this as a violent affront to The People: Nando's is vital to us, and they are doing it wrong. If you broke British culture down now – dismantled the Queen and the corgis and the teapots and the RAF – and built it up again from the bones anew, it would be this: Nando's and Dairy Milk and having a complicated relationship with Cheryl Cole. Having a favourite series of Big Brother and sneaking Haribo into the cinema with all the adrenaline of a violent crime. Loving or hating the 2018 World Cup run with all the energy in your body. Mums in long dresses, complaining in Debenhams. And, for fuck's sake, it would be built on a cornerstone of peri-peri salt on your chips. Broadsheet galactic brains like to pretend they don’t get Nando’s, as if there is anything to get beyond this: it is spicy chicken that always tastes good at an affordable price point. It is literally never not a bad idea to offer everyone out to the Nando’s. It solves every argument about where to eat ever had. It is the only place vegans and half-a-chicken protein lads can eat elbow-to-elbow. It is Britain."
Wednesday, 27 February 2019
Tuesday, 26 February 2019
The future
The future is already here, but unevenly distributed. Here are some glimpses of what lies in store.
First, science and technology are (again) going to do some amazing thing. Here is (the terribly sad) Scott Alexander to tell us about artificial intelligence. Read this first, then this. And here is Dominic Cummings, of all people, on genomic prediction, but also on related political thoughts. These developments have huge economic and political consequences that we have not started to grapple with.
Next, geopolitics. For the Eurasian future to come, here is Bruno Maçães on China and Russia. His twitter feed has interesting links and comments too. Also, one country with nuclear weapons has just dropped bombs on another country with nuclear weapons. Note that India attacked Pakistan proper, not merely Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Now consider this: what matters more - what China thinks about that or what American thinks about that?
If you are more interested in matters closer to home, you might want to note that the British element of the undergraduate Oxbridge intake is down by 5-10% over the last decade. (For graduates, the figures are entirely different: in postgraduate courses at Cambridge, there are now more overseas students than British ones.) Just consider what that means for the practical chances of British people from under-represented groups getting to attend Oxbridge in the first place: it's time for someone to endow a new college or two! (Also, it means that the standard of British Oxbridge rejects is increasing.) I see a similar pattern in applications for pupillage (i.e. to become a trainee barrister), namely that applications from non-British applications are increasing. We are already well aware that the City of London is like Wimbledon - a venue for foreign talent hosted by locals. Perhaps the universities and other professions will follow suit.
First, science and technology are (again) going to do some amazing thing. Here is (the terribly sad) Scott Alexander to tell us about artificial intelligence. Read this first, then this. And here is Dominic Cummings, of all people, on genomic prediction, but also on related political thoughts. These developments have huge economic and political consequences that we have not started to grapple with.
Next, geopolitics. For the Eurasian future to come, here is Bruno Maçães on China and Russia. His twitter feed has interesting links and comments too. Also, one country with nuclear weapons has just dropped bombs on another country with nuclear weapons. Note that India attacked Pakistan proper, not merely Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Now consider this: what matters more - what China thinks about that or what American thinks about that?
If you are more interested in matters closer to home, you might want to note that the British element of the undergraduate Oxbridge intake is down by 5-10% over the last decade. (For graduates, the figures are entirely different: in postgraduate courses at Cambridge, there are now more overseas students than British ones.) Just consider what that means for the practical chances of British people from under-represented groups getting to attend Oxbridge in the first place: it's time for someone to endow a new college or two! (Also, it means that the standard of British Oxbridge rejects is increasing.) I see a similar pattern in applications for pupillage (i.e. to become a trainee barrister), namely that applications from non-British applications are increasing. We are already well aware that the City of London is like Wimbledon - a venue for foreign talent hosted by locals. Perhaps the universities and other professions will follow suit.
Thursday, 14 February 2019
Friends and Neighbours
(Trigger warning: Brexit.)
I have been considering this (in The Economist) and this (in The Guardian), a couple of pieces by Jeremy Cliffe that make similar points about the mutual UK-EU misunderstanding. You might want to read them.
Cliffe's central point is that the EU sees itself as the guarantor of a "recognisably European way of life": long holidays, universal healthcare, a quiet, safe, calm world made manifest in "well-heated social housing blocks in Utrecht or Vienna, in comfortable houses with gardens on the outskirts of Barcelona or Prague, in safe streets and decent hospitals".
Cliffe's theory is similar to (and indeed in some respects overlaps with) my theory that the EU genuinely sees itself as guaranteeing peace in Europe: Cliffe and I both posit an EU that is doing something different from – and rather more ambitious than – what the UK imagines.
Below the break, I try to explore how this idea of the European Way of Life (EWL), and its centrality in the EU's conception of itself, has created problems for UK-EU relations.
I have been considering this (in The Economist) and this (in The Guardian), a couple of pieces by Jeremy Cliffe that make similar points about the mutual UK-EU misunderstanding. You might want to read them.
Cliffe's central point is that the EU sees itself as the guarantor of a "recognisably European way of life": long holidays, universal healthcare, a quiet, safe, calm world made manifest in "well-heated social housing blocks in Utrecht or Vienna, in comfortable houses with gardens on the outskirts of Barcelona or Prague, in safe streets and decent hospitals".
Cliffe's theory is similar to (and indeed in some respects overlaps with) my theory that the EU genuinely sees itself as guaranteeing peace in Europe: Cliffe and I both posit an EU that is doing something different from – and rather more ambitious than – what the UK imagines.
Below the break, I try to explore how this idea of the European Way of Life (EWL), and its centrality in the EU's conception of itself, has created problems for UK-EU relations.
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