Vivat Libertas

Humans are obsessed with the idea of the End Times, the apocalypse, the concept that we are teetering on the edge of a catastrophe. Most major world religions describe some kind of "end time" or debased age, and I'd argue that this has seeped through into modern Western culture; though the specifics change (these days politics, climate change or nuclear weapons herald the end of the world as we know it rather than, say, comets), each generation is always perverting the work of the last and the world as we know it is always definitely on the verge of ending. At the moment, we have two separate Apocalypses of the Month: the US presidential election and the EU referendum. In the US, the two frontrunners are a corrupt neoliberal and a creepy orange fascist. In the EU, the perpetually sulky and disruptive UK is calling a referendum as to whether to stay in an admittedly corrupt and labyrinthine institution with many a failing but lots of positives for education, research and...

Those who know me will know that, to keep myself in order and to let off steam, I frequently poke fun at, mock, and yell at the Right depending on my mood and how eloquent I feel. I don't really have much respect for it. Why not? Shouldn't I respect tradition? Didn't they come up with some good ideas? Nope. I cannot and will not respect an ideology, or loose collection of ideologies (names like Left and Right are hugely misleading and downright wrong, but easy to use and I generally take pot-shots at everything anyway), that is bigoted (witness the misogyny, racism, homophobia and xenophobia of, say, the Republicans) and appears to have no idea of what logic is (denying global warming and failing economics). I cannot respect an ideology that wants its presence in my uterus and presumes to tell me what to think and feel, then says it's providing me with greater liberty and shows this by privatising the fuck out of everything and removing my safety net. Ideologies sho...

Everyone knows about me and my crazy politics - legalise pretty much everything, complete net neutrality, corporations have a duty to society and not just to themselves, governments rarely (if ever) have the best interests of the people at heart, we should rise up and govern ourselves... ...so it may seem a bit odd that I'm now advocating a technocracy. The thing is, as patronising as I sound, what people want and what's actually good for them may not be the same thing - hence you get people with actual qualifications  to run the country instead of relying on a bunch of lawyers and novelists. Thus teachers/educators/psychologists run the schools, scientists are in charge of science, economists run the Treasury... ...It's not perfect - no political system will ever be - and I can imagine that there'd be almighty arguments about funding. The head of state would probably have to be a world-class diplomat just to stop the Cabinet from tearing itself apart. But individ...

I'm sick of liberals and I'm sick of conservatives. I'm sick of Labour and I'm sick of the Tories. I'm sick of the Republicans and I'm sick of the Democrats. I'm sick of fascists and I'm sick of anarchists. I'm sick of the Left and I'm sick of the Right. I'm sick of people refusing to look at the facts, in fact cheerfully ignoring them when they get in the way of political ideologies. I'm sick of people making shit up because it's easier to blame an ancient conspiracy than admit that there's no-one to blame. In fact, I'm sick of people - liberal, conservative, Labour, Tory, Republican, Democrat, fascist, anarchist, left, right - not looking at the truth. I've always believed that you can only fix the world if you actually know what's going on in it. It makes sense, right? If I didn't accept the truth of basic principles, like needing oxygen to respire, I'd die pretty quickly. If you don't understan...

I was reading this article fairly recently, which talks about Britain and a "two-speed Europe" - apparently, George Osborne's flip-flopped around on the issue a bit. Now he thinks that although Britain has a strong interest in the survival of the single currency, bailing Greece out is off-limits and we should have a two-speed EU, with eurozone countries as some kind of inner circle and with us on the outside. The article explains it better than I do. Hell, some of the comments (if you dare delve into the glorified insult-slinging which makes up a fair bit of the comments section) explain it better than I do, but these are just some of my random thoughts. Firstly, a two-speed Europe is a bit of a moronic thing to do if Britain wants any influence in the world (which it should aim for if we're to get the economy back on its feet and if we're not to become totally irrelevant). We can no longer afford to isolate ourselves and hope that the colonies will prop us u...