Peter Risdon

From Gavin Kennedy:
Take the parable of the buyer in contact with the “butcher, the brewer, and the baker”. Most readers of the paragraph containing the parable, who have not read and understood Adam Smith in his books, Moral Sentiments and Wealth Of Nations, go hopelessly adrift in concluding that there is a clash of self-interest [...]

Oh, I know there are worse things. But I did a quick search about Roman Polanski, wondering whether I had any comment to make, and found that you can read the full transcript of the allegations made against him, 20 or 30 pages long, while looking at pictures of his victim as a 13 year [...]

I have no idea what the rights and wrongs are of the dispute between two Christian hotel owners and a Muslim woman who claims she was insulted by them. I doubt it should be a police matter, if the woman felt insulted she should have taken her business elsewhere. Personal disagreements are not the business [...]

What is a “performative”? Here’s some context:
All performatives imply propositions. There’s no point in my operating a performative like, say, promising, or cursing, unless I have certain beliefs about the nature of reality: that there is indeed such an institution as promising, that I am able to perform it, and so on.
A reasonable test of [...]

John Rentoul thinks it wasn’t Scotland, but whoever was responsible for the legislation she broke should resign. That’s much more important than someone resigning for breaking it.
This legislation was malevolent and stupid. Malevolent because it seeks to transfer responsibility for managing immigration from the government to private citizens. I’d be all in favour if that [...]

Two interesting reads. In both cases, people not normally identified with the left make an argument for deficit spending.
Richard Posner, who is difficult to categorise but sometimes identified with libertarian thinking, writes: How I Became a Keynesian. An extract:
But for a confidence-building public-works program to be effective in arresting an economic collapse, the government must [...]

I know most people who read this will also read Iain Dale, but this paragraph from his interview with David Starkey deserves prominence. Starkey gets it exactly right:
We need a version of the American constitution. When you think of all the silly fuss over the office of Lord Chancellor – when did a Lord Chancellor [...]

One of the points that climate alarmists seek to “debunk” nowadays is the idea there was a global cooling scare in the 1970s. Here, for example, is Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, writing of “the myth that climate scientists previously believed the Earth was entering an Ice Age” and linking to a YouTube playlist [...]

The rational argument is that when Jesus Christ was born as a human being, the taking on of flesh by God changed for ever the status of the human body. It is a “temple of the Holy Spirit”. Once saints are in heaven, honouring their mortal remains is to honour the God who made them [...]

Two soldiers wearing at least three types of camouflage because the British Army has not properly outfitted its soldiers. Missions here range from Brown Zone to Green Zone back to desert brown within minutes. The soldiers need camouflage similar to what special operations folks wear. British and American special operations folks use [...]