Existing Actually: Living in the thick of it
Are you authoritarian or hippie? Reformer or revolutionary?

Something’s going to happen here.

Very soon. Maybe even on May 1st, to catch ourselves a good omen.
Honest.

So keep watching.

The BBC has got into bed with Microsoft to provide its planned “download everything BBC TV shows for a week after the event for free” service.

The BBC and Microsoft? Surely the BBC is a public service organisation, digital rights management (DRM) is evil and Microsoft is worse? Why not use Ogg or some similar open-geek format? We’ve already paid our licence fee… surely this goes against the free-to-air ethos that the Beeb stands for?

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You’ll have noticed that things have been rather quiet of late here at The Sharpener.

Not for much longer. A shiny new coat of paint in about to be applied and a refreshed roster of writers are being strapped into their flight seats ready for launch in April.

Keep watching the skies.

Douglas Murray, author of the Social Affairs Unit’s Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, recently made a speech at the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Lecture on the topic “What Are We To Do About Islam?”. This lecture has been reproduced on the SAU’s blog, trots out the usual rhetoric about “dhimmitude” and calls for, among other things, the ending of all Muslim immigration and the “persuasion” of Muslims to return to their own countries, and suggests that western converts to Islam are no more than the “Last Men” written of by Fukuyama, who cannot bear the idea of a life without struggle.

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“As Hobbes observes, all mental pleasure exists in being able to compare oneself with others to one’s own advantage… Nothing is of greater moment to a man than the gratification of his own vanity.” —Arthur Schopenhauer

“It is so depressing to think that we suffer because we are fools; yet, taking mankind in the mass, that is the truth. For this reason, no political party can acquire any driving force except through hatred; it must hold up someone to obloquy.” —Bertrand Russell

“Political lies can be dangerous, but what is more dangerous is the irrational bias against politics and elected politicians.”
“It must be something to do with us that we hate those we elect.” —Steve Richards

Were politics to be personified, it would be a manic depressive. It would be a chaotic cauldron of a human being that would quickly drown in its own bile and introspective rage, were it not scornfully spitting it out over all and sundry in an insomnious fountain of vitriol.
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British kids, as anyone who’s met one can attest to, are stupid. Their English, so new research tells us, is worse than those for whom the empyrean tongue is a second language. Half of them can’t spell ‘separate’. Almost four in five think that there’s an apostrophe in the possessive form of ‘its’. And all this from students of one of the country’s top universities. Egad!

Were they not so insignificant, one would undoubtedly shudder when considering what the standards are like lower down the age and ‘intelligence’ groups. Morons to a man, most probably.
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Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867), Ch.VI – ‘Its Supposed Checks and Balances':

“When the leading sect… in Parliament is doing what the nation do not like, an instant appeal ought to be registered and Parliament ought to be dissolved. But a zealot of a Premier will not appeal; he will follow his formulae; he will believe he is doing good service when, perhaps, he is but pushing to unpopular consequences the narrow maxims of an inchoate theory. Read More

Over the last couple of decades, Europe and the USA have been playing with the world’s Power like two kids bouncing up and down on a seesaw. Or at least they would’ve been were America not so fat.
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Yes, I know there haven’t been many posts here recently – things will hopefully change soon, if we ever get around to implementing some of the changes that have been loosely in the planning stages for months. Anyway, The Sharpener is up for various awards in A Fistful of Euros‘ 2nd European Weblog Awards, along with a bunch of other good blogs from around the continent. Have a gander, and vote as you see fit. If you want to, of course…