Thursday, July 05, 2018

Six of the Best 803

"Within hours of British police announcing last night that a couple from Amesbury, Wiltshire had been poisoned with Novichok, Russia’s propaganda machine was firing out projectiles in all directions with the usual aim of casting doubt and confusion in people’s minds." Sarah Hurst lays bare the tactics of the Putin regime.

Alastair Meeks diagnoses the disease in the English hard right and the failure of the rest of us to confront it.

Matthew D'Ancona is right about Jacob Rees-Mogg and his weaponising of quaintness: "He personifies all that is wrong with conservatism in 2018. But until we stop indulging him, we’ll deserve everything we get."

"Winchester, Eton, St Paul’s and Westminster all started out as philanthropic institutions whose statutes expressly excluded the children of the wealthy." Houman Barekat reviews Posh Boys by Robert Verkaik, a dissection of the effect of the public schools on British society.

Daniel Engber on the remarkable story of the triplets who were raised apart as part of a psychological experiment and found each other in later life.

Tom Worthington listens to a neglected Nick Drake compilation.

2 comments:

Phil Beesley said...

The Matthew D'Ancona article describes the weakness and strengths of Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The European Research Group has a hard core of Conservative MPs. It's about 21 Conservative MPs, so less than 10% of the non-payroll Tory party in parliament, using the smaller number. If we take the higher number, 70 MPs as ERG supporters, it grows to 30%.

Neither percentage is enough to worry Conservative Party thinkers about an absolute win for Rees-Mogg in a leadership election. But he has a lot of mates to stir excrement.

Kiron Reid said...

Picking up on the Sarah Hurst article on the Amesbury poisoning, Novichok and Russia. It is a good patient debunking of the Russian line. Neither the Russian or the British government is stupid enough to deliberately poison people in the country at this time, though Russia has no qualms about committing crimes during major events and undoubtedly timed the previous attack in Salisbury to give Putin a warm glow during his re-election campaign. It is astounding how many people in the UK, and in Ukraine, choose to believe conspiracies and lies about their own government (because they don't like the government) instead of blaming the people with the track record of brutal crimes in other European countries.