The Joy of Six 1121

"Talented Tory politicians are no longer gossiped about as potentially the next Prime Minister, but as the next Leader of the Opposition. Others are standing down early rather than go through the motions of waiting for voters to kick them out." Asa Bennett says the real battle for the future of the Conservative Party will begin when they have lost the next election.

Michael Walzer talks to Dissent about his new book The Struggle for a Decent Politics: "A liberal is someone who’s tolerant of ambiguity, who can join arguments that he doesn’t have to win, who can live with people who disagree, who have different religions or different ideologies. That’s a liberal. But those liberal qualities don’t imply any social or economic doctrine."

Joanna Blythman says we must take a stand against the farmed salmon industry.

"In the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, some experts worried that children confined at home would be vulnerable to abuse ... But the evidence suggests that in some parts of the United States, including New York City, those dire predictions were wrong: while the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc across the country, the epidemic of child abuse never arrived." An accidental experiment during Covid lockdown suggests too many children are removed to foster care, reports Tracy Tullis.

"Ray looks worried even when he is promising to love you all day (and all of the night). Dave looks like he’s won the pools even when he’s singing about an alcoholic clown expiring alone." Gareth Roberts celebrates 60 years of The Kinks.

Curious British Telly remembers Not With a Bang, a postapocalyptic sitcom from 1990.