2. An interesting article about calories - with a nice little note about the author at the end too.
3. Who Wrote It: Beto O’Rourke or Karl Ove Knausgaard? A quiz!
4. The latest in crazy American students: is Chelsea Clinton to blame for the Christchurch atrocity? (Spoiler alert: no.)
"Clinton, who is pregnant with her third child, was attending the vigil at New York University on Friday when senior Leen Dweik began castigating her in an astonishing moment caught on video.
'This right here is the result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you put out into the world [...] And I want you to know that and I want you to feel that deeply - 49 people died because of the rhetoric you put out there,' Dweik continues, jabbing her index finger toward Clinton as other students snap their fingers in apparent approval of her words.
'I'm so sorry you feel that way,' Clinton responds, only to provoke more ire from the crowd.
'What does "I'm sorry you feel that way" mean? What does that mean?' an unseen male is heard shouting from the crowd."
I'm going to go out on a limb here: a pregnant woman attending a memorial service for victims of a mass-murder should not expect to be accused of complicity in that murder simply because she recently spoke out against anti-Semitism. Controversial, I know.
(This, by contrast, is an interesting and much better informed angle on the crazy Christchurch guy.)
5. Why the Centrist Party needs Jeremy Clarkson (and other thoughts). "Guess how he voted in the referendum? What he thinks about leaving? He’s a Remainer: a treacherous, bleating, Britain-hating public schoolboy millionaire liberal Remainer, who thinks Brexit is a “clusterfuck”. He’s basically David Cameron, but less fat and with slightly better jeans."
6. Why the Independent Group is doomed and other interesting points, e.g. "This unequal distribution of Remain and Leave voters tells us why the referendum was such an upset and shock to some. It tells us why Remainers were shocked, but Leavers less so. This pattern of asymmetric distribution explains why you get Remain voters who say that they don’t have any Leave friends, but you get far fewer Leave voters who say the same thing of Remainers."
7. An anonymous civil servant writes: "When it was announced [Gina Miller] had won her case, I witnessed large teams within the Foreign Office break out into cheers and applause. Seriously. // A quick scroll though the social media accounts of my colleagues and you will find images of them proudly waving ‘Remain’ placards, campaigning for a ‘People’s Vote’, boasting ‘Jez we can’ and of course the usual apocalyptic messages of doom since the Brexit vote. The double-standards are astonishing. If I so much as followed the activities of Nigel Farage, I have no doubt that I would be called in for questioning. I re-call one conversation with a senior member of staff at the Foreign Office who told me she was ashamed when Boris Johnson was appointed Foreign Secretary as he is so “typically British”. [...] On June 24 2016 the mood within the civil service was like someone had died.[...] I have in fact come across senior staff working on our post-Brexit relationships who openly talk down the prospect of a UK-US FTA and encourage anti-Trump hysteria. Many of them even joined the protests against the President’s visit last year. During his visit it was common to hear jokes about Trump’s assassination from the very people meant to be working with our closest ally. The only thing worse than being pro-Brexit in the Civil Service is being pro-Trump. // This attitude isn’t confined to their own circles, these views are even being expressed in the presence of foreign ambassadors. In one case during a meeting with a High Commissioner of a close ally, one Civil Servant branded the High Commissioner a “Tory Wanker” in the presence of several foreign diplomats." What are we to think of this (assuming it is broadly true)? Did a British civil servant refer to a foreign diplomat as a "Tory Wanker"? (Is it a High Commissioner "of" or "to" a close ally?) Or do we still employ Tory Wankers as High Commissioners? Whatever the truth, I doubt there's much to surprise George Orwell in all this.
No comments:
Post a Comment