- My friend Sharon’s tumblr YourFreedumb documenting the idiocies original thinking at the new government website http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/repealing-unnecessary-laws:
The regulations on owning an elephant are complex. We believe it is not the state’s business to discriminate against pet lovers and propose a simplification in the rules currently on the statute books.
- Ian McMillan on the return of the Tories:
My father-in-law, a quietly spoken pigeon fancier and allotment tender, was described as The Enemy Within just because he went on strike to save his job. In the winter of 1984 I went coalpicking with him at Broomhill, not far from the site of the Cortonwood branch of Morrisons. […] Rows of police vans went by, slowing down as they saw a poet and a bloke in a cap bending and picking. I remember they were wearing shades, like American cops in a film, but maybe that’s just part of the dream. I do recall my father-in-law standing up and rubbing his back. “I don’t know what we’ll do here, lad,” he said. “I can’t run and tha can’t fight.”
- Bad Conscience on the aesthetics of poverty:
Human beings are drawn to beauty, and nobody wants to live in a dump. Having to do so makes life far more unpleasant than it otherwise would be – and this is an aspect of poverty, heaped on top of the other hardships that brings, which really ought not to be forgotten.
- GarlandGrey at Tiger Beatdown on a certain kind of novel by a certain kind of male novelist in late middle age:
The main characters of these books are all the same guy. He spends three hundred pages aggrandizing or belittling himself, but is ultimately the only fit judge of his self-worth and life. He is usually embattled, defending himself against the intrusion of silly, feminine interpretations of his behavior, lest he start making decisions based on the lives and feelings of others rather than his own childish needs. He blames everyone else for his problems, he is able to take women’s measurements on sight with eerie precision, but he’s not very good at sex. The decline of his libido is always a metaphor for death. ALWAYS.
