A tribute to Brian Magee, superb broadcaster and philosophy's great late 20th Century populariser

One of the unintended benefits of television being so monumentally lousy at the moment - and the fact that, no matter how hard I try, I can't find a single "original" film, drama series or documentary on Netflix or Amazon Prime I have any desire to watch - is that, apart from vintage films, most of my time slumped in front of the TV in recent weeks has been spent watching 20 to 30-year old BBC programmes featuring one very clever man discussing philosophy with even cleverer men, without the aid of graphics or filmed inserts or CGI or anyone dressing up in wigs and historical costumes or hilarious contributions from stand-up comics or a voiceover telling us "Time's running out - our two contestants have less than five minutes to sort out the mind-body identity problem!" An odd way to spend one's time, you might think - but, I assure you, most of these one-on-one interviews are rivetting. The very clever man is always Brian Magee...

An American school receptionist signals the start of summer by belting out Etta James's "At Last" over the PA

I'm not sure my old school would have condoned...

Theresa May - the "nanny state" social justice warrior in No. 10

I suspect many - perhaps most - right-wingers and conservatives (and quite a few centrists and left-wingers) are so horrified at the thought of the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse (Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell and Angela Rayner) taking charge of the country...

The grammatical errors that drive me mad... by the man in the grammatical glass-house (glasshouse?)

This tweet by a Conservative MP contains what is currently my least favourite mistake:

"Less" youngsters? Fewer. Fewer.  FEWER! After all, you is like talkin bout edukashun innit? This is a bit hypocritical of me, I know (or, if you prefer, a bit Brendan Cox of me)...

Because transgenderism is obviously the single most important social issue facing Britain...

That ridiculous story from today's Mail on Sunday (which you can read here) reminded me that it's been a while since...

Nazis to the Right of me, Antifa on the Left... here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

Okay, it's The Guardian - what did you expect? Common  sense? Rationality? Respect for the vast majority of people who don't share their bizarre views? Of course not - you expect its writers to support any proposal, no matter how deranged, whose sole purpose is to upset anyone who doesn't read the Guardian, work for the BBC, go on demos, doesn't think all white people are racist, doesn't despise Judeo-Christian culture and doesn't hate this country, its people, its traditions and its history. I've tried my best not to swallow the bait...

The National Trust's climbdown on gay badges is a temporary setback for the forces of Progressivism - which never rest, never sleep

'Dame' Helen Ghosh has been stymied in her attempt to punish National Trust volunteers who refuse to wear pro-Gay rainbow lanyards by forbidding them contact with the public. This is very good news. The former civil servant's tenure as director-general of the organisation is due to end soon in any case: she's due to take over as Master of Balliol College next March, where she will no doubt busy herself rooting out anything tainted by custom, tradition or common sense. After all, this is the woman who attempted to ban the word "Easter" from the the annual Cadbury's/National Trust Easter egg race. She can now tinker and busybody away to her heart's content overseeing a vital section of Britain's educational assembly-line, whose main purpose these days appears to be churning out yet more self-righteous fools to further swell the ranks of left-liberal elite social engineers determined to rewire our brains and our instincts...

Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson on the fifth column being created by universities (h/t: The Salisbury Review)

I followed a Twitter link to the latest posting on the Salisbury Review website this morning to an item entitled "Getting rid of women's studies and other dross". There I found a YouTube video of part of a talk given by Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, in which he reveals himself to be a scourge of left-liberal academic orthodoxy. For instance:
“There’s no reason why the public at large should be funding a fifth column whose aim is to disrupt   the fundamental structures of western civilisation with tax money that’s devoted to supporting people while they’re doing that.”
And this:

The new DCMS logo - spot the deliberate mistakes.

Spotted them? Here they are:

The 1950s were crushingly conformist? They had nothing on the 2010s!

I didn't reach these shores until late 1958 or early 1959, so I missed most of the '50s. Besides, I was only six at the time. What I mostly remember were the Teddy Boys, the industrial grime on the buildings (accompanied by a deliciously rich, murky smell), the fascinating honeycomb coverings on old-fashioned gas-fires, and the weird, tasteless green stuff that began appearing on my plate (Norwegians didn't do salads back then). And television, which hadn't yet reached the Frozen North. Without any meaningful memories to guide me, I'll accept the orthodox view that social attitudes in the 1950s were as drably conformist as everyone says they were. Certainly...

Why do young people vote Labour? They've been taught to. And it's going to get worse.

If you're a secondary school pupil, eight out of ten of your teachers vote for left-wing parties. Presumably...

What Western academics, Jeremy Corbyn and Islamic fanatics agree on

Believe it or not, this list wasn't compiled by some bitter old right-winger like me...

Martin Durkin and James Delingpole in the most stimulating podcast of the year - red meat for right-wingers

I didn't mean to spend an hour this morning listening to James Delingpole interviewing the maker of the hugely influential online film, The Brexit Movie. But I made the mistake of listening to the first few minutes of the podcast...

The Simpsons tackle Yale's SJWs

There are as many high-IQ Conservatives as Lefties - so why are there ten times as many left-wing academics?

Ask most left-liberals why there's such a preponderance of left-wing academics in British universities - almost 100% in some subjects - and they'll smirk and respond that it's because left-wingers are generally more intelligent than right-wingers. That has always been, to quote Dame Edna Everage, "a phallus I'd like to explode" - not because I believe that people who score well on IQ tests should be running everything (see the comments section of this post, in which GCooper suggests the term "Laputan" for what he calls "high-falutin' idiocy"), but because (a) I've met lots of very, very bright left- and right-wingers from most non-criminal walks of life, and, even discounting my own natural prejudice in favour of conservatives and the fact that I've spent most of my life amongst left-wingers, I haven't noticed a particular left-wing imbalance, smarts-wise - to be honest, many clever sods seem to display an imperfect understanding of how logic or the rules of evidence work. But until now, I've never found the right ammunition with which to attack leftists' smug self-regarding assumptions regarding their cognitive superiority. Well, here it is:

Conservatism shouldn't be the new Punk Rock - it should be the new Rock 'n' Roll!

Yes, I know - the YouTube video-blogger and Infowars polemicist Paul Joseph Watson isn't everyone's cup of tea: he's mouthy, loud, belligerent, Northern, snarky, and vain about his looks. He's the sort of arrogant, angry young man you really wouldn't want your daughter bringing home. And yet - and this is important - he's on our side! Well, he is if the phrase "our side" means "anti-socialist". Watson is a right-wing libertarian rather than a traditional conservative. I'm very much not a libertarian - and I suspect you aren't either - but what we on the Right all share (or should) is a detestation of socialism, all the way from its left-of-centre, global-corporatist, fill-yet-boots, soft-fascist Blair/Clinton wing through to the irrational, joyless, nihilistic, hate-filled, hard-fascist, Corbyn/Sanders end of the left-wing spectrum...

A proper review of Andrew Klavan's enthralling memoir, "The Great Good Thing"

As what follows is a review of a book about one man's conversion to Christianity - and most of you don't "do" religion - let me offer heathens a non-religious hors d'oeuvre:

Andrew Klavan's mother had an uncle who was an Austrian Jew named Adolf. He fought for Austria during the First World War, and went missing in action, presumed killed. He was never heard from again. When Hitler rose to power in the thirties, Klavan's Ashkenazi grandfather is said to have remarked, “Well, I guess now we know what happened to Adolf.”

Well, it made me laugh - as did many passages in Klavan's memoir, The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ - a snip at just £2.99 on Amazon. I've already written about it once (here), but I've been asked to do a proper review. Here it is:

All undergraduates should be force-fed Thomas Sowell quotes until they see sense

I was in a mood of mild despair the other day after reading that stoodents at the University of Pennsylvania had removed a portrait of William Shakespeare and replaced it with the image of a black lesbian poet...

American universities are both the best in the world - and a laughing stock

I've just started following a Twitter feed called New Real Peer Review, which posts extracts from the sort of stunningly ridiculous twaddle currently being excreted by many American universities. Most of us never see this codswallop, because it's written in a strange, impenetrable language and it addresses non-issues and non-subjects which would strike most people - including, I suspect, most intellectuals - as the most appalling load of pretentious, meaningless balls. From what I've read, this drivel isn't meant to help anyone better understand our world or to increase our store of knowledge, but is rather an attempt to create an alternative cultural Marxist fantasy universe in which every traditional standard of scholarship, sense, taste and discrimination has been jettisoned in order to shape a bizarre narrative of victimhood, suffering and oppression which bears absolutely no relation whatsoever to reality. Take the case of Jennifer Christine Nash...

Congratulations, Sir Roger Scruton - knighted by the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace last Friday

I expressed my utter delight at the news...